The Western supermajors have left. All of them. Just as the Ukraine War began, Exxon and BP and Shell have walked away from projects they’ve sunk tens of billions of dollars into, knowing full well they won’t get a cent of compensation. Halliburton and Schlumberger’s operations today are a shadow of what they were before Russia’s previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Between future sanctions or the inability of the Russians to pay them with hard currency, those operations now risk winding down to zero. The result is as inevitable as it is damning: at least a 50% reduction in the ability of Russia to produce crude. (No. Chinese oilmen cannot hope to keep things flowing. The Chinese are worse in this space than the Russians.) The outstanding question is how soon?
