Semyon Novoprudsky on whether Russia can live without oil and gas revenues
GAZETA.RU
17.07.2020
AUTHOR
Semyon Novoprudsky
Journalist
About the author
Trouble came from where they did not expect. While we were defeating the coronavirus, like the Pechenegs and Polovtsians once did, we introduced God into the Basic Law (without explaining which one, which would be useful in a multi-confessional and largely godless country), heroically fought a rainbow on ice cream, the threat hung over the foundation of our existence. Above our main spiritual and material bond. Over Mother Oil and her brother Gas.
No, oil and gas, these two of our main allies, not counting the army and the navy, have, fortunately, not yet run out in the country.
But with the markets for these goods, it seems that extremely serious problems are coming, which will inevitably require Russia to create a fundamentally new economic model of its existence.
The other day, European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said that the European Union, the largest consumer of Russian hydrocarbons, intends to completely abandon the use of fossil fuels, including oil and gas, by 2050. “The EU's goal is to become climate neutral by 2050,” Simson said at a briefing on July 8, not just like that, but answering questions about the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The pretty Estonian woman Kadri Simson outlined the trajectory of the EU's energy path for the next 30 years: to stop using oil and natural gas, replacing it with “decarbonized gases” and, above all, hydrogen.
AUTHOR
Semyon Novoprudsky
Journalist
About the author
Trouble came from where they did not expect. While we were defeating the coronavirus, like the Pechenegs and Polovtsians once did, we introduced God into the Basic Law (without explaining which one, which would be useful in a multi-confessional and largely godless country), heroically fought a rainbow on ice cream, the threat hung over the foundation of our existence. Above our main spiritual and material bond. Over Mother Oil and her brother Gas.
No, oil and gas, these two of our main allies, not counting the army and the navy, have, fortunately, not yet run out in the country.
But with the markets for these goods, it seems that extremely serious problems are coming, which will inevitably require Russia to create a fundamentally new economic model of its existence.
The other day, European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said that the European Union, the largest consumer of Russian hydrocarbons, intends to completely abandon the use of fossil fuels, including oil and gas, by 2050. “The EU's goal is to become climate neutral by 2050,” Simson said at a briefing on July 8, not just like that, but answering questions about the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The pretty Estonian woman Kadri Simson outlined the trajectory of the EU's energy path for the next 30 years: to stop using oil and natural gas, replacing it with “decarbonized gases” and, above all, hydrogen.
These are not just words. The European Commission has already approved two strategies aimed at achieving "climate neutrality". According to the first, a single energy market and diversification of suppliers will be created (that is, Russia will not dominate it, as it is now). According to the second, the European Union itself will begin mass production of pure hydrogen for energy purposes.
To understand the "scale of the disaster" for Russia, let's see how things stand with our oil and gas revenues and the EU's share in them (with the mutual war of sanctions going on for more than six years) now.
So, in 2019, Russia earned $419 billion in export revenues. 60% of this amount was provided to our country by three goods: crude oil ($ 121.4 billion), oil products ($ 66.9 billion) and natural gas ($ 19 billion). Half of all these oil and gas revenues came from Europe: the share of Russian oil in consumption there reaches 30%, and gas - 40%. The total share of Russian budget revenues from oil and gas sales, taxes and other payments of oil and gas companies is no less than 50%.
In short, at least every second ruble of the salary of every Russian citizen is the color of oil and the smell of gas.
Of course, you can say that there is still a whole 30 years left until 2050. That we simply will not live to see the "threat" of the EU materialize (although our children and grandchildren will survive). Promising to get rid of oil and gas does not mean doing. But to transfer the Russian economy, which has been living on revenues from oil and gas for decades, to the conversion of hard currency obtained from the export of hydrocarbons into foreign technologies, clothes and food, on some fundamentally different basis is not a matter of one year. In almost the same 30 post-Soviet years, Russia has failed to do this.
In fact, there is a big problem right now. Due to the collapse of world hydrocarbon prices (hello pandemic!), A sharp decline in gas demand in Europe and the OPEC + deal to limit oil production, there is a protracted shock reduction in the inflow of foreign currency to Russia. The export revenues of the Russian economy in April-June fell for the sixth quarter in a row and became the lowest in 15 years - these are the latest data from the Bank of Russia on the country's balance of payments.
The main historical process within which Russians continue to live is the continuing disintegration of the USSR and the formation of the post-Soviet Russian statehood. And do you know what the most important of the "Soviet" remains in our life? Economic model.
Of course, we still have many Soviet houses, Soviet pipes, Soviet monuments, Soviet roads. We are still ruled by members of the CPSU. But above all, we still have a Soviet structure of the economy, in the center of which is the production of oil and gas and the sale of hydrocarbons for export, in order to buy something that we still do not produce at home or do, but of a much worse quality.
May 29, 1965 can be considered the date of birth of the economy in which we continue to live to a large extent even now. On that day, the first oil gusher came from well R-1, which was drilled by the team of master Grigory Norkin at the Samotlor oil field, the largest in Russia so far in the Nizhnevartovsk region of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug.
Since 1969 — the sixth decade! —This deposit has been one of the main breadwinners of Russians, even after the collapse of the USSR.
For decades we have been repeating the sacramental phrase "we have no time to swing." And we continue to slowly eat up the Soviet economic potential.
What new scientific, industrial, consumer brand has Russia created and brought to the world market over the 30 post-Soviet years? What has been noted in outstanding technological and informational breakthroughs since the beginning of the century, in the creation of the main gadgets and technologies of mankind?
Is that Pavel Durov's Telegram messenger, which Russia, fortunately, finally stopped banning after more than two years of unsuccessful attempts.
Instead of “our own Plato's and quick-witted Newtons,” we have so far given birth to only the fiscal system “Plato” for truck drivers. Their smartphones, fast by the mind, have not yet been created either.
Our "modern weapons", all these missiles with an unpredictable flight path, all this hypersound, of course, can indulge the pride of paycheck to paycheck or even unemployed inmates on squeezed sofas in the wilderness. But this weapon not only cannot be smeared on bread, it is even impossible to use it, only to frighten the enemies: otherwise everyone will die almost instantly, including you and me.
Arms trade, no matter how you increase it, will not be full either. Even state employees will not have enough income for wages from the export of arms.
Yes, Russia has many other natural resources besides oil and gas. The main one, based on how we can imagine the development of the world in the post-coronavirus era, may be the supply of drinking water.
But in any case, it is quite obvious that the age of oil and gas, in which all the main generations of people living in Russia have grown up, is ending. Regardless of whether the EU succeeds in giving up hydrocarbons or not.
As the KVN team "Siberian Storytellers" joked about this, "well, so far only the word has been invented." Meanwhile, it is necessary to talk (and not just say - do!) Not so much about import substitution as about the priority sectors and businesses of the new post-oil and gas Russian economy.
Gradually parting with oil and gas as critically important sources of income and the very existence of Russia should become one of the key tasks of the country's development. Energy, medical and food security in the modern world is almost more important than military security.
We see how a tiny virus of still unknown origin in a matter of months has caused damage to the world, comparable to a full-fledged hot world war.
So we need to take the EU's intention to completely abandon oil and gas by 2050 with the utmost seriousness. There is nothing eternal and permanent in the world. The oil and gas age will also inevitably end. Flexibility of reactions, readiness to change is one of the most important virtues in the modern world. Russia has repeatedly in its history paid with global upheavals and destruction of the foundations for a categorical unwillingness and unwillingness to change anything, for replacing important and pleasant stability for all of us with swamp stagnation, cementing all living life.
Is that Pavel Durov's Telegram messenger, which Russia, fortunately, finally stopped banning after more than two years of unsuccessful attempts.
Instead of “our own Plato's and quick-witted Newtons,” we have so far given birth to only the fiscal system “Plato” for truck drivers. Their smartphones, fast by the mind, have not yet been created either.
Our "modern weapons", all these missiles with an unpredictable flight path, all this hypersound, of course, can indulge the pride of paycheck to paycheck or even unemployed inmates on squeezed sofas in the wilderness. But this weapon not only cannot be smeared on bread, it is even impossible to use it, only to frighten the enemies: otherwise everyone will die almost instantly, including you and me.
Arms trade, no matter how you increase it, will not be full either. Even state employees will not have enough income for wages from the export of arms.
Yes, Russia has many other natural resources besides oil and gas. The main one, based on how we can imagine the development of the world in the post-coronavirus era, may be the supply of drinking water.
But in any case, it is quite obvious that the age of oil and gas, in which all the main generations of people living in Russia have grown up, is ending. Regardless of whether the EU succeeds in giving up hydrocarbons or not.
In the wake of the battle of sanctions, the word "import substitution" appeared in the Russian political lexicon five years ago, but then gradually disappeared.
The creation of a full-fledged competitive economy not based on the export of hydrocarbon energy is becoming, if not a national ideology, then one of the most important tasks of Russia if it wants to successfully complete the post-Soviet transit and not turn into a raw material appendage of China. While Russia is fighting the largely mythical threats of the Western world, we are ignoring the obviously most important threat to our sovereignty and security - China, which, unlike the EU, cannot impose a favorable price for oil or gas on us through negotiations and whose human resources will be tenfold surpass the Russian ones.
As the KVN team "Siberian Storytellers" joked about this, "well, so far only the word has been invented." Meanwhile, it is necessary to talk (and not just say - do!) Not so much about import substitution as about the priority sectors and businesses of the new post-oil and gas Russian economy.
Gradually parting with oil and gas as critically important sources of income and the very existence of Russia should become one of the key tasks of the country's development. Energy, medical and food security in the modern world is almost more important than military security.
We see how a tiny virus of still unknown origin in a matter of months has caused damage to the world, comparable to a full-fledged hot world war.
So we need to take the EU's intention to completely abandon oil and gas by 2050 with the utmost seriousness. There is nothing eternal and permanent in the world. The oil and gas age will also inevitably end. Flexibility of reactions, readiness to change is one of the most important virtues in the modern world. Russia has repeatedly in its history paid with global upheavals and destruction of the foundations for a categorical unwillingness and unwillingness to change anything, for replacing important and pleasant stability for all of us with swamp stagnation, cementing all living life.
Oil rigs and gas pipelines cannot endlessly and almost single-handedly feed millions of Russians. We need to tap into intellectual, political and economic resources to start shaping a new Russian economy. Effectively investing in its creation the income that the oil and gas trade still brings us, as the flax and hemp trade once brought. If we do not create this new economy without the current degree of dependence on petrodollars, we will, at least in the foreseeable future, face such poverty that the current income level of most Russians will seem incredible wealth and prosperity.It's hard to believe in it now, but for many centuries Russia somehow lived without oil and gas at all. So we have a historical experience of such a life.
No comments:
Post a Comment