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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> Does that really cause such a massive run up in price?

Yes.

1. Russia is the number 2 exporter of oil, behind Saudi Arabia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_expor...

2. The fact that the US only gets 3% of its oil from Russia is kind of irrelevant - it's largely a global market.

3. The idea that Russia can just switch to selling all of its oil to China, so then the West can then get its oil from someplace else (a) is not feasible and (b) would completely defeat the purpose of sanctions in any case.

4. Prices are always set at the margins. A relatively small shortfall can cause a huge price increase primarily because, when there is a shortfall, the price needs to increase enough for some buyers to just drop out of the market altogether.

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I think (3b) isn’t true, since the sanctions are effecting every part of Russia’s economy. And while the petroleum industry is like 40% of their exports by revenue, the other 60% is obviously significant. Also from a Russian point of view, the difficulty importing and lack of access to the international banking system may be more painful.

In fact if the west could target everything except oil, they probably would (since that’s the most critical export that Europe needs).

Your overall point still stands though. Your argument is strong. It’s not practical for Russia to simply redirect their flow to maintain “business as usual”.

China is supporting Russia. At the end of day, you want buy "stuff". China makes worldwide "stuff". Yes, they can't but Channel or enjoy netflix, but they are world food producers and near unlimited oil (if you factor in the frozen methane supply will dwarf entire Saudi). For money, China will be the middleman. So you still supporting Putin everytime you purchased an app from iPhone store. It is just a more complicated steps to assist Putin to take down Ukraine. The real question is can you sanction China? Look around you. China ensures decades of low inflation. Take China out of equations, you gonna see BLM rioting on steroid in America.

Currently Russian energy exports are not sanctioned. Talk of sanctions causes business planning chaos. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-open-sanctioning-...

For 4) rising energy prices hurt the poor the most as % of household spend. Rich don't care. Middle-class can bear it. Poor suffer disproportionately.

> Currently Russian energy exports are not sanctioned

Not by the government, but they are largely being boycotted by buyers, which has a similar effect.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2022/03/04/wi...

The pipelines from Russia through Ukraine are still flowing energy into western Europe. Producer and transit countries have diligently avoided pipeline disruption.

It's good to hear that China would not do anything that defeats the purpose of sanctions. I want to know why and how you know this.

Shell was just buying Russian oil, because, you know, it's on sale. They're making excuses like "it's not illegal yet".

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