{"id":13992,"date":"2015-10-31T07:34:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T12:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13992"},"modified":"2015-10-31T07:34:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T12:34:54","slug":"the-us-russia-gas-pipeline-war-in-syria-could-destabilise-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13992","title":{"rendered":"The US-Russia gas pipeline war in Syria could destabilise Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US-Russia gas pipeline war in Syria could destabilise Putin<\/a><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

Military solutions are not the answer to the perfect storm of climate, energy, food, economic and geopolitical crises facing Russia<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For the last few years, the Saudi kingdom\u2019s insistence on\u00a0pumping oil<\/a>\u00a0at high capacity has dramatically depressed oil prices. The result has undermined Saudi\u2019s major oil rivals in OPEC \u2013 like Iran and Venezuela.<\/p>\n

It has also hit Russia, hard.<\/p>\n

Rating agency Standard & Poor\u00a0forecasts<\/a>\u00a0that Russia\u2019s budget deficit is set to swell to 4.4 per cent of GDP this year. Russia\u2019s own finance ministry concedes that if expenditures continue at this rate, within sixteen months \u2013 by around the end of next year \u2013 its oil reserve funds will be exhausted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, over the last year real incomes have dropped by 9.8 per cent, and food prices have spiked by 17 per cent, heightening the risk of civil unrest.<\/p>\n

System failure<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rumbling along beneath the surface of such financial woes are deeper systemic issues.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from the Swedish Defence Research Agency notes that \u201cprolonged dry periods in southern Russia are having the effect of reducing the level of food production\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most of Russia\u2019s\u00a0wheat imports<\/a>\u00a0come from Kazakhstan, \u201cwhere climate change is expected to exacerbate droughts. These impacts would make farming harder and food more expensive,\u201d observe Dr. Marina Sharmina and Dr. Christopher Jones of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s looming energy crisis is the other elephant in the room. In 2013, HSBC forecasted that Russia would hit peak oil between 2018 and 2019, experiencing a brief plateau before declining by 30 per cent from 2020 to 2025.<\/p>\n

That year, Fitch Ratings came to pretty much the\u00a0same<\/a>\u00a0conclusion. And last year, Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Russia\u2019s second largest oil producer, Lukoil,\u00a0predicted<\/a>\u00a0that the production could peak earlier due to falling oil prices and US-EU sanctions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US-Russia gas pipeline war in Syria could destabilise Putin Military solutions are not the answer to the perfect storm of climate, energy, food, economic and geopolitical crises facing Russia For the last few years, the Saudi kingdom\u2019s insistence on\u00a0pumping oil\u00a0at high capacity has dramatically depressed oil prices. The result has undermined Saudi\u2019s major oil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[265,3790,3372,10367,6741,2092,1775,600,617,660,1026,694,701,776,827,834],"class_list":["post-13992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-energy-crisis","tag-gas-pipeline","tag-hsbc","tag-lukoil","tag-middle-east-eye","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-opec","tag-peak-oil","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-russia","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-syria","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13993,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13992\/revisions\/13993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}