#oil & gas pumps market
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poojagblog-blog · 3 months ago
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The global Artificial Lift Market is projected to reach USD 9.0 billion in 2028 from USD 7.3 billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 4.4% according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™. Artificial lift comprises techniques in the oil and gas sector to boost hydrocarbon production from wells with insufficient natural pressure. Employed when reservoir pressure is inadequate, methods like rod lift systems, electric submersible pumps, gas lift, and hydraulic pumping enhance flow rates. These mechanisms enable more efficient recovery, compensating for declining reservoir pressure and optimizing production in mature wells. The growing requirement to maximize the production potential of mature fields is one of the leading factors driving the growth of the artificial lift market, as the demand for oil and gas is constantly growing. Digitalization and automation to enable better analysis of good conditions present promising opportunities for the artificial lift market.
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aishavass · 1 year ago
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dsiddhant · 1 year ago
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The global Artificial Lift Market is projected to reach USD 9.0 billion in 2028 from USD 7.3 billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 4.4% according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™.
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adroit--2022 · 1 year ago
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rjzimmerman · 2 months ago
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Trump’s Oil and Gas Donors Don’t Really Want to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’. (Wall Street Journal)
Excerpt from this Wall Street Journal story:
Donald Trump wants oil companies to “drill, baby, drill” on the first day of his presidency, but his fossil-fuel benefactors have a different agenda.
Many of the tycoons who backed the Republican’s victorious campaign say what they need help with is shoring up demand for their products—not pumping more fossil fuels, which they have little incentive to do.
They are pushing for policies that would lock in fossil-fuel use, such as easier permitting for pipelines and terminals to shuttle fossil fuels to new markets. They also favor eliminating Biden administration policies meant to put more electric vehicles on the road. 
Under President Biden, shale companies produced record amounts of oil and natural gas as crude prices rebounded from the pandemic’s depths and then soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the industry is also confronting the early stages of a long-term shift away from fossil fuels, as well as concerns that gasoline consumption has peaked in the U.S.
Trump handed shale donors their first big return on investment by nominating Liberty Energy Chief Executive Chris Wright, a fracking booster and fossil-fuels champion, to lead the president-elect’s Energy Department. 
When Dan Eberhart, the CEO of oil-field services firm Canary, met with Trump during a fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida this summer, Eberhart had a unique request. He asked Trump to push back on the International Energy Agency, the influential, Paris-based energy forecaster. The agency has predicted global oil demand will peak by the end of the decade, earning scorn from GOP lawmakers who dubbed the group an “energy transition cheerleader.” 
“You need to stop acting like fossil fuels are the devil,” Eberhart said in an interview, referring to the IEA’s stance. 
A spokesperson for the IEA said it remains “focused on its key missions of energy security and energy transitions, based on the mandates from our member governments.”
Many of Trump’s oil and natural-gas supporters favor easing regulations that govern drilling. The changes would include scrapping rules targeting methane emissions, getting new permits to frack on federal land and eliminating climate disclosure rules.  
But some donors grimace when they hear Trump promise that under his watch, crude-oil producers would open the floodgates. He has also promised to cut Americans’ energy costs by 50% or more. 
Oil backers’ skepticism stems from the fact that Wall Street has successfully pressured chronically indebted frackers to stop burning through cash, and return it to shareholders via buybacks and dividends instead of reinvesting it to frack more wells.  
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dertaglichedan · 7 months ago
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President Joe Biden is prepared to release more oil from the country’s strategic reserves if gas prices increase during the summer. This is the latest plan by the Biden administration to counter higher prices at the pumps and the more expensive prices on various goods due to inflation.
A Biden administration energy adviser suggested gas prices are “still too high” for many in the country and said he favors taking action to “cut them down a little bit further.”
“We will do everything we can to make sure that the market is supplied well enough to ensure as low [a] price as possible for American consumers,” Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security Amos Hochstein told the Financial Times. “I think that we have enough in the SPR if it’s necessary.”
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quirkymarshmallows93 · 2 years ago
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Gas Station Stream of Consciousness Post
Gas Stations as Liminal Spaces
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I've had quite a few hyperfixations in my day - ATMs, laundry detergents, credit cards - so my current one pertaining to gas stations is fitting considering my affinity for liminal spaces and the dedication of this blog to them. Liminal spaces are transitory in nature, hence their portrayal in online circles through photos of carpeted hallways, illuminated stairwells, dark roads, and backrooms, among other transitional points.
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Gas stations are posted online as well; images of their fuel pumps or neon signage photographed through a rainy car window communicate their liminality and the universal experiences they provide to all of society. Perhaps they are the ultimate specimen of a liminal space. The machines they are created for, automobiles and tractor trailers alike, themselves are tools for motion, vestibules that enable travel and shipment across long distances at high speeds. Cars and roads are liminal spaces, albeit in different formats, and gas stations serve as their lighthouses. Vehicles at filling stations, therefore, are in a sense liminal spaces within liminal spaces within liminal spaces.
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The uniqueness of a gas station as a liminal space, however, is its intersection with the economics and aesthetics of capitalism. Gasoline (and diesel fuel) is a commodity, downstream from crude oil, merely differentiated by octane ratings. Some argue that minute distinctions between agents, detergents, and additives make some brands better than others. Indeed, fuels that are approved by the Top Tier program, sponsored by automakers, have been shown to improve engine cleanliness and performance, but this classification does not prefer specific refiners over others; it is simply a standard. To a consumer, Top Tier fuels are themselves still interchangeable commodities within the wider gasoline commodity market.
The Economics of Gas Stations
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The market that gas stations serve is characterized by inelastic demand, with customers who reckon with prices that fluctuate day in and day out. This is not to say that consumer behavior does not change with fuel prices. It has been observed that as prices rise, consumers are more eager to find the cheapest gas, but when prices fall, drivers are less selective with where they pump and are just happy to fill up at a lower price than last week. In response, gas stations lower their prices at a slower rate than when increasing prices, allowing for higher profit margins when wholesale prices fall. This has been dubbed the "rockets and feathers" phenomenon.
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When portrayed as liminal spaces, gas stations are most often depicted at night, places of solitude where one may also enter the adjacent convenience store and encounter a fellow individual who isn't asleep, the modern day lightkeeper. The mart that resides at the backcourt of a gas station is known to sell goods at higher prices than a supermarket, simultaneously taking advantage of a captive customer, convenient location, and making up for the inefficiencies of a smaller operation. It may come as no surprise, then, that gas stations barely make any money from fuel sales and earn their bulk through C-store sales. This is a gripe I have with our economic system. Business is gamified, and in many cases the trade of certain goods and services, called loss leaders, is not an independent operation and is subsidized by the success of another division of a business, a strategy inherently more feasible for larger companies that have greater scale to execute it.
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Nevertheless, most gas station owners, whether they have just one or hundreds of sites, find this method fruitful. Even though most gas stations in the US sell one of a handful of national brands, they operate on a branded reseller, or dealer, model, with oil companies themselves generally not taking part in the operations of stations that sell their fuels. The giants do still often have the most leverage and margin in the business, with the ability to set the wholesale price for the distributor, which sells at a markup to the station owner, which in turn will normally make the least profit in the chain when selling to the end customer at the pump. This kind of horizontal integration that involves many parties lacks the synergies and efficiencies of vertical integration that are so applauded by capitalists, but ends up being the most profitable for firms like ExxonMobil, who only extract and refine oil, and on the other end of the chain merely license their recognizable brands to the resellers through purchasing agreements. Furthermore, in recent years, independent dealers have sold their businesses to larger branded resellers, in many cases the ones from whom they had been buying their fuel.
A Word on ExxonMobil's Branding Potential
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The largest publicly traded oil company in the world is Exxon Mobil Corporation. It is a direct descendent of the Rockefeller monopoly, Standard Oil, which was broken up in 1911 into 34 companies, the largest of which was Jersey Standard, which became Exxon in 1973. This title was generated by a computer as the most appealing replacement name to be used nationwide to unify the Humble, Enco, and Esso brands, decades before AI was spoken of. The latter brand is still used outside of the United States for marketing, arising from the phonetic pronunciation of the initials of Standard Oil. In 1999, Exxon and Mobil merged, and the combined company to this day markets under separate brands. Exxon is more narrowly used, to brand fuel in the United States, while Mobil has remained a motor oil and industrial lubricant brand, as well as a fuel brand in multiple countries.
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Mobil originated in 1866 as the Vacuum Oil Company, which first used the current brand name for Mobiloil, and later Mobilgas and Mobilubricant products, with the prefix simply short for "automobile". Over time, Mobil became the corporation's primary identity, with its official name change to Mobil Oil Corporation taking place in 1966. Its updated wordmark with a signature red O was designed by the agency Chermayeff & Geismar, and the company's image for service stations was conceived by architect Eliot Noyes. New gas stations featured distinctive circular canopies over the pumps, and the company's recognizable pegasus logo was prominently on display for motorists.
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I take issue with the deyassification of the brand's image over time. As costs were cut and uniformity took over, rectangular canopies were constructed in place of the special ones designed by Noyes that resembled large mushrooms. The pegasus remained a prominent brand icon, but the Mobil wordmark took precedence, which I personally believe to be an error in judgement. This disregard for the pegasus paved the way for its complete erasure in 2016 with the introduction of ExxonMobil's "Synergy" brand for its fuel. The mythical creature is now much smaller and appears only at the top right corner of pumps at Mobil gas stations, if at all.
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Even into the 90s and the 21st century the Pegasus had its place in Mobil's marketing. In 1997, the company introduced its Speedpass keytag, which was revolutionary for its time and used RFID technology, akin to mobile payments today, to allow drivers to get gas without entering the store or swiping a card. When a Speedpass would be successfully processed, the pegasus on the gas pump would light up red.
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When Exxon and Mobil merged in 1999, the former adopted the payment method too, with Exxon's less iconic tiger in place of the pegasus.
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The program was discontinued in 2019 in favor of ExxonMobil's app, which is more secure since it processes payments through the internet rather than at the pump.
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What Shell has done with its brand identity is what Mobil should've done for itself. The European company's logo was designed in 1969 by Raymond Loewy, and is a worth contender for the "And Yet a Trace of the True Self Exists in the False Self" meme. In recent years, Shell went all in on its graphic, while Mobil's pegasus flew away. I choose to believe that the company chose to rebrand its stations in order to prevent the malfunction in the above image from happening.
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ExxonMobil should have also discontinued the use of the less storied Exxon brand altogether, and simplifying its consumer-facing identity to just the global Mobil mark. Whatever, neither of the names are actual words. As a bonus, here is a Google map I put together of all 62 gas stations in Springfield, MA. This is my idea of fun. Thanks for reading to the end!
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darkmaga-returns · 2 months ago
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Recent events in the State of Washington pit environmentalists against the voting public.
Doomberg
Nov 13, 2024
“Don't pay any attention to the critics—don't even ignore them.” – Samuel Goldwyn
By nearly all the measures that matter, the State of Washington’s energy mix is about as green as it gets. Leveraging the powerful flows of the Columbia River, Washington generates approximately 60% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams. The Grand Coulee Dam is by far the largest hydroelectricity producer in the US and ranks among the top ten globally, generating more than 20 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. The state is also home to the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear energy facility—the Columbia Generating Station—which provides a further 8% of annual supply to the grid, about as much as is currently delivered by wind turbines. The balance of Washington’s generation comes from clean-burning natural gas, and the last of its large coal furnaces is set to close in 2025. Set it and forget it | Getty
A similar story emerges when analyzing how residents in Washington heat their homes. More than 58% use electricity, and state leaders are actively pushing heat pumps as a replacement for traditional resistive heating options. Only a third of households rely on natural gas, while the remaining 9% rely on a mix of propane, wood, and other sources.
Although Washington produces almost no oil or natural gas within its borders, it has positioned itself shrewdly in both markets. The state is home to five refineries, ranks fifth in the US by total refining capacity, and is a net exporter of petroleum products. Washington is also a major conduit of natural gas produced in British Columbia and Alberta, home to some of the lowest-cost supply in the world. The Gas Transmission Northwest pipeline is capable of flowing 2.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) as it passes into the state from Idaho on its way to Oregon. The Northwest Pipeline has a peak capacity of 3.8 bcf/d and enters Washington in Sumas, southeast of Vancouver, facilitating gas supply for Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.
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communicationblogs · 4 months ago
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Coiled Tubing Insights: A Deep Dive into Services, Operations, and Applications
Coiled Tubing Market Overview:
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Coiled Tubing Market Report Coverage
The “Coiled Tubing Market Report — Forecast (2024–2030)” by IndustryARC, covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments in the Coiled Tubing Industry. By Service: Well Intervention & Production, Drilling, Perforating, Fracturing, Engineering Services, Milling Services, Nitrogen services and others. By Operations: Circulation, Pumping, Logging, Perforation, Milling and Others. By Technology/Services: Software Solutions, Hardware By Location: On-Shore, Off-Shore By Application: Wellbore Cleanouts, Electrical Submersible Pump Cable Conduit, Fracturing, Pipeline Cleanout, Fishing, Cementing, Nitrogen Jetting and others. By End Use Industry: Oil and gas Industry, Engineering Procurement and Construction Industry, Others By Geography: North America (U.S, Canada, Mexico), South America (Brazil, Argentina, and others), Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Others), APAC (China, Japan India, SK, Australia and Others), and RoW (Middle East and Africa)
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Key Takeaways
North America dominates the Coiled Tubing Market share of 46.6% in 2023, owing to its advanced oil and gas industry, technological innovation, and substantial investments in exploration and production activities.
The development of unconventional resources, such as shale oil and gas, has increased the demand for coiled tubing services. Coiled tubing is often employed in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations in these unconventional reservoirs.
Well intervention services, including well cleaning, stimulation, and logging, are major applications of coiled tubing. As older wells require maintenance and newer wells require optimization, as a result growing the Demand for Well Intervention Services using coiled tubing continues to increase.
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Coiled Tubing Market Drivers
Increased Exploration and Production Activities
The surge in oil and gas exploration, notably in unconventional resources such as shale, tight gas, and heavy oil, is fueling the demand for coiled tubing services. Integral to well intervention and stimulation procedures, coiled tubing plays a pivotal role in sustaining and augmenting production rates. This heightened exploration and production activity underscores the significance of coiled tubing services in maintaining operational efficiency and maximizing output in the energy sector.
Increasing Energy Demand
The escalating global energy demand propels the coiled tubing market forward. With an ever-growing need for energy resources, particularly in oil and gas sectors, there’s a heightened requirement for efficient extraction methods. Coiled tubing technology offers a versatile and cost-effective solution for various well intervention and drilling operations, catering to the increasing complexities of resource extraction. Its flexibility, mobility, and ability to access challenging environments make it indispensable in meeting the surging energy demands worldwide. As industries strive to optimize production and enhance operational efficiency, coiled tubing emerges as a crucial component in the quest for sustainable energy solutions.
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udhhyog2 · 3 months ago
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Buy MS Flange ISI 1538 at Lowest Price in Delhi NCR
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aishavass · 1 year ago
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dsiddhant · 1 year ago
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The global Artificial Lift Market is projected to reach USD 9.0 billion in 2028 from USD 7.3 billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 4.4% according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™.
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adroit--2022 · 2 years ago
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steelindustryman · 3 months ago
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GI Flanges at the Lowest Price in Maharashtra
Maharashtra, one of India's leading industrial states, is renowned for its diverse manufacturing sector, ranging from textiles to heavy machinery. For businesses in this vibrant market, ensuring the procurement of high-quality industrial components is essential. Among these components, Galvanized Iron (GI) flanges play a crucial role in ensuring the durability and reliability of piping systems. At Udhhyog, we offer GI flanges at the lowest prices in Maharashtra, providing an excellent solution for all industrial applications.
GI flanges are essential for connecting pipes, valves, pumps, and other equipment in various industries, including construction, oil and gas, and water treatment. The unique properties of galvanized iron, such as resistance to corrosion and increased strength, make these flanges a preferred choice for many businesses. By opting for GI flanges, companies can significantly enhance the longevity and performance of their systems.
At Udhhyog, we prioritize quality without compromising on affordability. We understand the challenges faced by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Maharashtra when it comes to procurement. Our technology-driven platform simplifies the purchasing process, ensuring that businesses can access top-notch GI flanges without breaking the bank. We source our products from trusted manufacturers, ensuring that our customers receive only the best quality.
One of the key advantages of purchasing GI flanges from Udhhyog is our competitive pricing. We strive to offer the lowest prices in the market, enabling our customers to optimize their budgets while still acquiring high-quality materials. Additionally, our streamlined supply chain ensures fast and efficient delivery, so you can keep your projects on schedule.
Moreover, Udhhyog provides flexible credit options tailored for MSMEs, empowering businesses to make purchases without immediate financial strain. This approach not only supports the growth of small businesses but also fosters a collaborative industrial ecosystem in Maharashtra.
In conclusion, if you're searching for GI flanges at the lowest price in Maharashtra, look no further than Udhhyog. Our commitment to quality, affordability, and customer satisfaction makes us the ideal partner for all your industrial needs. Explore our platform today and discover how we can help your business thrive in the competitive landscape of Maharashtra's industries.
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rjzimmerman · 5 months ago
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Why no president has slowed the U.S. oil boom. (Washington Post)
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As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.”
Four years later, it appears that Biden may have overpromised.
The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. The unplanned fossil fuel boom reflects an uncomfortable truth for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris: It is difficult for any president to stop the spigot of U.S. oil production, a leading driver of both the economy andclimate change.
“If you were to show someone who came from Mars the line of U.S. oil and gas production over the last 15 years, they probably would not be able to tell whether a Republican or Democrat was in the White House,” said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
Oil drilling continues to be a core issue in Donald Trump’s quest to retake the White House. Trump and his supporters argue that Biden and Harris have waged “a war on energy.” The former president has pledged to “drill, baby, drill” and to restore America’s “energy dominance.”
The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia.
Biden’s signature 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, has also helped boost production of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy. On Friday — the two-year anniversary of the law — the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it has awarded $27 billion worth of grants for clean-energy projects nationwide.
Yet Biden has struggled to significantly wean the U.S. economy from fossil fuels because of legal obligations, political challenges and market demand, according to interviews with a dozen current and former administration officials, energy analysts, climate activists and others who have worked closely with the White House.
In June 2021, a federal judge struck down Biden’s pause on oil and gas leasing on federal lands, delivering a win to Republican-led states that had challenged the policy. Then in February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiled global energy markets, fueling high prices at the pump and record profits for big oil companies.
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mariacallous · 2 years ago
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As Russia ramps up its second offensive, a debate has erupted over whether Moscow or Kyiv will have the upper hand in 2023. While important, such discourse also misses a larger point related to the conflict’s longer-term consequences. In the long run, the true loser of the war is already clear; Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be remembered as a historic folly that left Russia economically, demographically, and geopolitically worse off.
Start with the lynchpin of Russia’s economy: energy. In contrast to Europe’s (very real) dependence on Russia for fossil fuels, Russia’s economic dependence on Europe has largely gone unremarked upon. As late as 2021, for example, Russia exported 32 percent of its coal, 49 percent of its oil, and a staggering 74 percent of its gas to OECD Europe alone. Add in Japan, South Korea, and non-OECD European countries that have joined Western sanctions against Russia, and the figure is even higher. A trickle of Russian energy continues to flow into Europe, but as the European Union makes good on its commitment to phase out Russian oil and gas, Moscow may soon find itself shut out of its most lucrative export market.
In a petrostate like Russia that derives 45 percent of its federal budget from fossil fuels, the impact of this market isolation is hard to overstate. Oil and coal exports are fungible, and Moscow has indeed been able to redirect them to countries such as India and China (albeit at discounted rates, higher costs, and lower profits). Gas, however, is much harder to reroute because of the infrastructure needed to transport it. With its $400 billion gas pipeline to China, Russia has managed some progress on this front, but it will take years to match current capacity to the EU. In any case, China’s leverage as a single buyer makes it a poor substitute for Europe, where Russia can bid countries against one another.
This market isolation, however, would be survivable were it not for the gravest unintended consequence of Russia’s war—an accelerated transition toward decarbonization. It took a gross violation of international law, but Putin managed to convince Western leaders to finally treat independence from fossil fuels as a national security issue and not just an environmental one.
This is best seen in Europe’s turbocharged transition toward renewable energy, where permitting processes that used to take years are being pushed up. A few months after the invasion, for example, Germany jump-started construction on what will soon be Europe’s largest solar plant. Around the same time, Britain accelerated progress on Hornsea 3, slated to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm upon completion. The results already speak for themselves; for the first time ever last year, wind and solar combined for a higher share of electrical generation in Europe than oil and gas. And this says nothing of other decarbonization efforts such as subsidies for heat pumps in the EU, incentives for clean energy in the United States, and higher electric vehicle uptake everywhere.
The cumulative effect for Russia could not be worse. Sooner or later, lower demand for fossil fuels will dramatically and permanently lower the price for oil and gas—an existential threat to Russia’s economy. When increased U.S. shale production depressed oil prices in 2014, for example, Russia experienced a financial crisis. Lower global demand for fossil fuels will play out over a longer timeline, but the result for Russia will be much graver. With its invasion, Russia hastened the arrival of an energy transition that promises to unravel its economy.
Beyond a smaller and less efficient economy, Putin’s war in Ukraine will also leave Russia with a smaller and less dynamic population. Russia’s demographic problems are well-documented, and Putin had intended to start reversing the country’s long-running population decline in 2022. In a morbid twist, the year is likelier to mark the start of its irrevocable fall. The confluence of COVID and an inverted demographic pyramid already made Russia’s demographic outlook dire. The addition of war has made it catastrophic.
To understand why, it’s important to understand the demographic scar left by the 1990s. In the chaos that followed the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Russia’s birthrate plunged to 1.2 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed for a population to remain stable. The effects can still be seen today; while there are 12 million Russians aged 30-34 (born just before the breakup of the Soviet Union), there are just 7 million aged 20-24 (born during the chaos that followed it). That deficit meant Russia’s population was already poised to fall, simply because a smaller number of people would be able to have children in the first place.
Russia’s invasion has made this bad demographic hand cataclysmic. At least 120,000 Russian soldiers have died so far—many in their 20s and from the same small generation Russia can scarcely afford to lose. Many more have emigrated, if they can, or simply fled to other countries to try to wait out the war; exact numbers are hard to calculate, but the 32,000 Russians who have immigrated to Israel alone suggest the total number approaches a million.
Disastrously, the planning horizons of Russian families have been upended; it is projected that fewer than 1.2 million Russian babies may be born next year, , which would leave Russia with its lowest birthrate since 2000. A spike in violent crime, a rise in alcohol consumption, and other factors that collude against a family’s decision to have children may depress the birthrate further still. Ironically, over the last decade Putin managed to slow (if not reverse) Russia’s population decline through lavish payoffs for new mothers. Increased military spending and the debt needed to finance it will make such generous natalist policies harder.
The invasion has left Russia even worse off geopolitically. Unlike hard numbers and demographic data, such lost influence is hard to measure. But it can be seen everywhere, from public opinion polls across the West to United Nations votes that the Kremlin has lost by margins as high as 141 to 5. It can also be seen in Russia’s own backyard; while an emboldened NATO could soon include Sweden and Finland, Russia’s own Collective Security Treaty Organization is tearing at the seams as traditional allies such as Kazakhstan and Armenia realize the Kremlin’s impotence and look to China for security.
Perhaps most important of all, Russia has reinvigorated the cause of liberal democracy. In the year after its invasion, French President Emmanuel Macron won a rare second term in France, the far-right AfD lost ground in three successive elections in Germany, and “Make America Great Again” Republicans paid an electoral penalty in the U.S. midterms. (The far right did sweep into power in both Sweden and Italy, but such wins have so far failed to dent Western unity and appear more motivated by immigration.) And this says nothing of the wave of democratic consolidation playing out across Eastern Europe, where voters have thrown out illiberal populists in Slovenia and Czechia in the last year alone. It is impossible to attribute any of these outcomes to just one factor (U.S. Democrats also got a boost from the overturn of Roe v. Wade and election denialism, for example), but Russia’s invasion—and the clear choice between liberalism and autocracy it presented—no doubt helped.
Nowhere, however, has Russia’s invasion backfired more than in Ukraine. Contrary to Putin’s historical revisionism, Ukraine has long had a national identity distinct from Russia’s. But it’s also long been fractured along linguistic lines, with many of its elites intent on maintaining close relations with the Kremlin and even the public unsure about greater alignment with the West.
No longer. Ninety-one percent of Ukrainians now favor joining NATO, a figure unthinkable just a decade ago. Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians consider themselves Ukrainian above all else, a marker of civic identity that has grown by double digits since Russia’s invasion. Far from protecting the Russian language in Ukraine, Putin appears to have hastened its demise as native Russian speakers (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky included) switch to Ukrainian en masse. Putin launched his invasion to bring Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit. He has instead anchored its future in the West.
Of course, one can argue that, however much the war has cost Russia, it has cost Ukraine exponentially more. This is true. Ukraine’s economy shrank by more than 30 percent last year, while Russia’s economy contracted by just about 3 percent. And this says nothing of the human toll Ukraine has suffered. But, like Brexit, Western sanctions on Russia will play out as a slow burn, not an immediate collapse. And while Russia enters a protracted period of economic and demographic decline, once peace comes, Ukraine will have the combined industrial capacity of the EU, United States, and United Kingdom to support it as the West’s newest institutional member—precisely the outcome Putin hoped to avoid. Russia may yet make new territorial gains in the Donbas. But in the long run, such gains are immaterial—Russia has already lost.
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