Russia remains one of the planet’s largest oil producers and exporters, drone strikes or not. Its pipelines still pulse with the black blood of the world economy. And despite all the sanctions, sermons, and moral grandstanding from the West, the crude keeps flowing — just with more creative paperwork.
But let’s play the hypothetical: if sanctions actually worked — if Russian oil were somehow kept off the world market for real — what happens next? The global supply shrinks, China must look elsewhere, and prices rise. Simple math. Who smiles then? Every other oil producer on Earth. From Riyadh to Texas, champagne corks would pop in the boardrooms of the supposedly virtuous. Meanwhile, those still buying Russian oil would suddenly find their “discounts for the brave” evaporating. The moral high ground has a funny way of costing extra.
That’s the surface view. Dig deeper and the picture muddies. China, that tireless dragon of demand, now limps. Its economy wheezes through overcapacity, debt, and disillusionment. It also happens to possess some of the largest oil storage facilities on the planet — tanks brimming with opportunistic purchases made while prices were sweet and the headlines loud. Some of that Russian oil was never about need; it was about bargain-hunting.
Now, as the Chinese slowdown solidifies and the global economy slips toward its well-deserved correction, one must ask: will all those apocalyptic forecasts of $150 oil really materialize? Or will the so-called shortage reveal itself as another mirage in the desert of economic illusion?Energy markets are not moral tales — they’re grim comedies of necessity. Sanctions, like most forms of idealism, end up feeding the very monsters they were meant to starve.