Alexey Mukhin: The time has come for countries that are “in the resource”

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum this year has significantly expanded its boundaries. Representatives from 130 countries became participants, indirectly proving that there is no question of any isolation of Russia. According to Aleksey Mukhin, General Director of the Center for Political Information, such a stir aroused a genuine interest of other countries in our country’s ability not only to withstand dozens of sanctions that have fallen, but also to continue developing. The political scientist paid special attention to the future of the fuel and energy complex, analyzing in his article the speech of the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, under the rather unusual title “Sodom and Gomorrah in the energy market.”

“To put it simply, now the time has come for countries that are, so to speak, “in the resource”. That is, having not only a mineral and hydrocarbon base, the “lungs of the planet” in the form of an ocean of forests, thousands of kilometers of rivers and a significant area of ​​​​lakes, but also a serious intellectual potential, also trained by years of the most severe sanctions,” he said in his column in the InfoTEK publication. » Mukhin.

He stressed that the acquisition of sovereignty is the most important condition for the country’s continued development. But its implementation is impossible without an industrial base, logistics and investment attractiveness.

“The fuel and energy complex is traditionally responsible for our “base”, to a large extent it is also responsible for investment attractiveness, and for logistics, at least in Russia and in the adjacent territories, to be honest. It is not surprising, therefore, that at the SPIEF site, in particular, they talked about the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic, in the development of which many companies take part, including from among the Russian oil and gas giants,” Mukhin writes.

According to the political scientist, the highlight of the forum was the speech of the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, under the rather unusual title “Sodom and Gomorrah in the energy market.” In this speech, the blame for the chaos in the energy market was laid on the neo-colonizers, who played on the nerves of its participants with the help of the notorious “green agenda”, which turned out (and this is already clear to everyone) is at least untenable.

“As the head of Rosneft noted, “without clearly defined goals, viable technologies, and understanding of the long-term consequences of their actions, they launched a process that gave rise to a crisis in the global energy sector and unleashed inflation on world markets.” Igor Sechin also reminded me of another simple and obvious fact. Previously, European countries received clear economic advantages in the form of relatively inexpensive, high-quality and reliably supplied Russian energy resources. Now this competitive advantage is at the disposal of the Asia-Pacific countries that have “intercepted” these resources,” Mukhin quotes Sechin’s speech at the SPIEF energy panel.

In his report, Igor Sechin actually passed judgment on the current “new non-carbon reality.” He noted: “Carbon neutrality is unattainable on a global scale given the current pool of green technologies – many of the necessary technologies are still at the pilot development stage. At the same time, oil and gas technologies are currently at the peak of their development, in terms of technical and economic efficiency they have no equal, and in terms of physical indicators – energy density and heat of combustion – they can be surpassed only by hydrogen and thermonuclear fusion, which have not yet been mastered.”

“The fallacy of refusing to develop traditional carbon industries in the fuel and energy complex is already obvious – it remains to recognize this and work on the mistakes. That is, those who pointed out to the people obsessed with the “green agenda” the perniciousness of the undertaking turned out to be right, but were not heard. Today the darkness has subsided, the blind have begun to see. As a result, BP, Shell, Eni and other majors quietly started investing in carbon again, changing, so to speak, strategic guidelines,” Mukhin said.

However, as Igor Sechin noted, “the circus continues” – now with the ceiling of the US national debt. At the same time, the head of Rosneft offered a recipe for a cure for this misfortune: “It seems extremely important to separate two interrelated, but not identical problems – an alternative reserve currency against the backdrop of a slow weakening of the dollar and the rapid formation of alternative payment and settlement systems between interested countries and economies.”

“However, there is good news: a temporary lack of interest in oil, a catastrophic underinvestment in the traditional fuel and energy complex by Western countries led to an artificial shortage and, as a result, to an increase in oil prices. And demand continues to grow. As President Vladimir Putin noted during the SPIEF, Africa and Asia are rapidly developing and require traditional energy. Accordingly, the demand for carbon is growing and will continue to grow, and Russia and other countries that care about the future will work to eradicate energy poverty,” Mukhin comments.

In his opinion, a big role here is assigned to the largest Russian companies (and above all Rosneft), which have the necessary skills to survive in the most difficult conditions and have fully proved their competitiveness.

“The idea of ​​the “ark of salvation”, which was discussed at last year’s St. etc. And it remains to leave the sanctions “Sodom and Gomorrah”, in the figurative expression of Igor Sechin, behind and, leaving, do not look back, ”concluded the political scientist.