Russia's banal reality lies in between energy superpower and bankrupt state

The price of oil will not stay low enough for long enough to destroy the system as it destroyed the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The International Energy Agency warned last week that the world’s oil fields were depleting at an alarming rate. We will require four new Saudi Arabias by 2030 to meet demand.

The inevitable energy rebound will bail out Russia again, but not enough to restore the country to superpower status soon, if ever. “Does Russia really have energy power?” asked Professor Alan Riley, from City University.

“The giant gas fields are running down. Russia must turn to the High North where reserves are 560 kilometers into the Arctic, 360 meters down, and very expensive to extract. This is at an incompetent Russia with a Soviet-style gas system that has not made the investments needed,” he said.

Somewhere between yesterday’s inflated talk of Russian riches and today’s talk of Russian bankruptcy lies the banal reality of a mid-ranking nation, run by a dysfunctional elite, with the worst aging crisis in the Western world, that happens to be sitting on a lot of resources.