, Columnist
Russia Can’t Replace the Energy Market Putin Broke
A network of gas fields and pipelines developed at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars has been effectively thrown away.
Getting gas to India will be even more costly than laying this pipe to China.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Russia spent almost 50 years building its energy market in Europe. President Vladimir Putin destroyed it in under 50 weeks. Finding a replacement will be almost impossible.
While Russia has found alternative markets for its crude oil, mostly in India, switching sales of refined products and — perhaps even more so — natural gas will take years and come at huge cost. That’s if it’s even possible to create markets as the world turns away from fossil fuels.