With pipeline stuff? Sure. There’s an infrastructure cost involved in switching sources. With tanker and rail stuff? Nah, it’s comparatively trivial to switch suppliers. Unfortunately for Russia, the most obvious declines are from pipeline sales in the first year of the war. The rest have decreased too, but those are the ones where you can just wave your hand at the graph and it’s obvious. They basically can’t afford to sell at market rate because their oil comes with too many indirect costs to the buyer at the moment.
To be fair. It could be. In an evil Uber or door dash sort of way. Sell at a loss, make infrastructure dependent on it, hike up prices.
Do I think it will be or is way more like they are desperate for cash? Prolly
With pipeline stuff? Sure. There’s an infrastructure cost involved in switching sources. With tanker and rail stuff? Nah, it’s comparatively trivial to switch suppliers. Unfortunately for Russia, the most obvious declines are from pipeline sales in the first year of the war. The rest have decreased too, but those are the ones where you can just wave your hand at the graph and it’s obvious. They basically can’t afford to sell at market rate because their oil comes with too many indirect costs to the buyer at the moment.
Walmart does the same. Pushes out all the local grocers first.