[spurgu]

Yeah (as sibling poster pointed out) I guess that it was more of a distraction point from throwaway. I just read and thought of it in broader terms of oil and gas being super important to any modern civilization.

What you say is true though, short term, but I think I might still rather be in Russia's position in terms of fossil fuels than that of the US, when we look at things long term. What Russia has the option of doing - which is also being discussed elsewhere in this thread - is using those resources domestically, to grow/develop its own industries and (currently dwindling) population. In fact that's what they're being pushed to do by the sanctions (as they have been developing their agriculture as a response to previous sanctions). I've been really really skeptic of the sanctions (to put it mildly) since the beginning. They will always find ways to sell their resources (if they want to).

[toss1]

Even though the sanctions are imperfect, they still have a very real effect. At an absolute minimum, it vastly increases the overhead of the sanctioned country to sell it's oil, and those who do work around sanctions can demand and get a large discount, thus reducing revenues. Even more effective are the supply-side sanctions, and the Russian auto and air transportation industries are already seeing serious effects, which will only get worse.