They've chosen to supply gas to European markets at the prices they did for three reasons. First was that they preferred long term contracts with fixed price instead of selling at the prevalent market price. It made planning of export and budget revenues easier in the long run. Second reason was that they went for increased market share instead of maximizing profits with less exports. Third is that pipeline exports are preferred over LNG and that they didn't ( and still don't have sufficient export volumes via LNG).
And that all made sense before, but European customers stopped going for long term contracts which blows reason one. Selling gas cheaply means it would be widely used so money would be made on volume sales rather than high margin sales per unit of product. A pipe is more efficient but pipes can be built and infrastructure for shipping and ships can be built too. They had pipes to Europe that went no where else and Europe believed they could use that against Russia and bully them into short term contracts to then use the fluctuation of the gas prices at different times of year to buy when it is cheap and use stored gas when it was expensive. What they didn't expect was that Russia might refuse to sell gas when the prices dropped too far.
Europe was getting cheap energy and those
still tried to manipulate things and bully Russia to get it even cheaper.
Russia didn't have the infrastructure to ship gas to other potential customers and they are still in the process of sorting that out so revenue will be down a little but they are still making good profits considering their current situation... and as BRICS expands things will only get better, while the situation for the west is getting worse.
Kiev wants 160 F-16s by summer...
As for making Europe first option, there was really no second option. In a sense there still isn't for gas produced in Yamal. Gas for China goes from completely different sources.
Russia should set up industry in that region and use the cheap gas to power it... things like fertiliser too can be based there... use the raw materials to create value added products and sell the value added products to the world. Invest in hydrogen technology and develop pipelines that can transport hydrogen gas in some form and they can transition to zero fossil fuels eventually too.
They were not made to sell gas for "cheap" prices, it was government decision.
It was corruption bought and paid for.
Winners of current clash are US, Norway, Algeria and other natgas exporters to EU, while losers are EU and Russia. As simple as that.
I disagree, this is going to break up the west and separation from the west is the best possible result for Russia... they would have dragged her down and corrupted her too.
The US looks OK because they can print their way out of it... but for how long?
They have made their currency appear unreliable... which it is... the point of an international trade currency is that it be safe and reliable and the US dollar is no longer either for a growing number of countries.
Misleading, low quality video, as per usual from this source. Japanese kept 30% of the project, as did Indians keep their 20%. Since Rosneft owned 20% before Exxon withdrawal, Russian gov owns 50% including RN part. Video made it sounds like Russia now owns whole project, even if they quoted ownership structure in the beginning.
They have gone from perhaps 12% to 50% ownership, that is a huge change and the American and British companies are out... how long before Japan gets the push too... they are being their usual hostile selves...
And it is not just this, there are dozens of situations where companies based in Cyprus own power stations and heating plants in Russia who are suddenly finding taxation agreements being ended so they are now paying double taxes and closing their HQs in Cyprus means foreign owners can no longer steal money from the Russian economy.