In the wake of the new sanctions against Russia, what will happen to their oil exports? What impact will this have on the price of their oil and gas? And what will it mean for the rest of the world?
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00:00:20.660Thanks so much to the guys joining me today on this topic. We've got Brady Wedham and Paul
00:00:25.980of course and uh the mission today is a discussion about what's going to happen in the wake of russia
00:00:32.320uh creating sanctions for the first time in the world it's a very ironic moment in that sense that
00:00:38.220where russia is usually getting shut down on the resources and the things that they need
00:00:42.620from the rest of the western world now they're doing that to the world on par i believe that
00:00:47.880they are going to reduce by 40 exports on oil on oil for the from the eastern part of the country
00:00:55.360that got hit by the drone attack mike so you know in the beginning of the end of january the drones
00:01:01.200hit their reserves in the eastern side of of the country uh basically uh took out a couple refineries
00:01:07.600they have some reserves they have and so now they've said okay we're not able to get it back
00:01:12.720online so we're going to start rationing gas from that part of the world or that part of the country
00:01:18.640But it's interesting, Mike. So, you know, Russian oil. So those very few people know how the economics of Russian oil works.
00:01:28.260So I wanted to just step back for a minute and and talk a little bit about Russia and oil, because Russian oil is traditionally sold at a very low price.
00:01:37.800Being a communist country, they produce it, they put it into market.
00:01:41.780They primarily, as you and I talked about before the show, use it for their own use in country.
00:01:48.640So for manufacturing, for their citizens, for the war effort against Ukraine.
00:01:55.380So for this show, it fluctuates a little bit up and down, but not as much as we do because we see crazy fluctuations in oil.
00:02:03.320We have no control over the price of oil at all in this country.
00:02:06.620But because they're a communist country and because they map out the direction of their country with oil, they keep it roughly around $25 a barrel.
00:04:59.440Now, the last thing I want to do is sit here sounding like a bunch of communists, but doesn't
00:05:04.900it seemed like a reasonable thing to have this position where the rest of the world right now
00:05:11.580is floating around uh on oil prices and russia probably doesn't care that much they've got their
00:05:19.540own ability to produce their whole industry everything is so they're they are self-sufficient
00:05:25.520at the moment they're not they're not choked on gas well it's interesting so you're looking at it
00:05:30.060now you know in in the middle east and all the issues going on in iran how we're seeing the price
00:05:34.940the spike right right the price increase and the longer this goes on the straight issues everything
00:05:41.080now it's just another wrinkle in into the dynamic now you have russia saying oh well you know we had
00:05:47.920drone attacks we've been hit our reserves in the east are now down we're going to start to reduce
00:05:53.780you know uh we need to ration so quite frankly we're going to reduce it our exporting by 40
00:06:00.400percent all of a sudden the ukraine hits the eastern side of russia and the reserves there
00:06:05.340now we're really in trouble right so we were you know this is the uh you know we're dancing on the
00:06:11.660head of a pin here and all we need is for something to happen on the other side of russia
00:06:16.960and then china and india which are highly dependent on russian oil are really impacted
00:06:25.260so it doesn't matter whether they're shipping or not or whether they can get through this trade it
00:06:29.620won't matter at that point because uh they're going to be sending nothing anyway well then
00:06:33.940it gets most of its oil now from russia as of recently like they used to be iraq before and
00:06:39.140they they shop wherever it's cheapest but right now russia seems to be the cheapest for them so
00:06:43.020yeah, they're a major supplier. Oh yeah, for sure. If you take a look, a lot of the nations that are
00:06:47.640in trouble right now, I mean, it's quite shocking. Sri Lanka, they're on fuel rationing. Pakistan,
00:06:53.980workweek reduction. India, export controls. China, they've got industrial limits.
00:06:59.920I've never heard of that in China before. Vietnam, well, it's true, they're highly industrial, right?
00:07:05.960Vietnam, fuel purchase limits, that's a tough one. That one, that, by the way, when you can't go to
00:07:12.860the gas station and buy gas, that's when society starts to get really antsy. Thailand, price
00:07:19.020controls. Let's see. Indonesia, subsidy reduction. So people are paying through the roof for gas and
00:07:26.780oil. Germany, energy rationing plan is in effect. Italy, public transport adjustments.
00:07:33.120France, price interventions. So fuel price caps and subsidies all over the place just to keep
00:07:40.320them in the game and moving along indonesia uh subsidies have been cut and uh people are uh
00:07:48.160people are protesting already the cost of living now they're out there they've got gas prices on
00:07:53.040top of that at the highest that they've ever seen it so just a few of the countries that are
00:07:59.200struggling right now as now russia has put a tighter clamp on the world's fuel consumption
00:08:05.600yeah we you know more supply issues so if if they continue and like i said there's a mishap in the
00:08:12.000eastern part of that country it's really going to change the dynamic of this and quite frankly from
00:08:17.120a canadian perspective we're going to go well above two dollars a liter so you know it's it's
00:08:22.880not a joke anymore because we've left ourselves fully exposed to this so and you know it's it's
00:08:29.520interesting when the war happened in iran we were looking for a statement on what to do next what
00:08:35.120was going to happen in canada it's pretty quiet you know we said well we might you know send some
00:08:40.000people over there you know to help out you know from uh get people through the straight from a
00:08:45.200logistics perspective there was all these things and then there was a multitude of different
00:08:50.800statements coming out of the prime minister's office trying to tell us you know his position
00:08:56.720but we couldn't really figure out what his position was but no one talked about gas
00:09:01.280it's a very good point at that moment we should have been like okay we're going to two dollars a
00:09:07.500liter and we produce a lot of oil what are we doing mr prime minister yeah we produce a lot of
00:09:12.900a lot of oil to ship down to the u.s to refine and sell us back so we we ship it at a discount
00:09:19.080and then we get it back at a premium so again you look at places like norway uh russia we're
00:09:27.200I guess what you're saying, I'm sorry, Paul, what you're saying is we're tied to the nonsense that or whatever difficulties the U.S. is experiencing when there's absolutely no reason to cut that tie would give us a huge economic advantage compared to where we're at right now.
00:09:42.620Right. And this, you know, as I've said on previous shows, this is a decision we made, you know, in 19, it started in 1975. We started Petro Canada. We went out and we decided we were going to nationalize our own gas, our own oil. And so we started to refine it. We started to sell it. We had ceilings and floors on gas prices that we self-imposed.
00:10:07.460I know that drove everyone on the west coast of Canada crazy because, you know, private gas companies wanted the ability to...
00:10:17.080But it reduced a lot of the market fluctuation, I think, at the time.