The Duran Podcast - West FAILS to destroy Russia energy complex. West living standards drop

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

West FAILS to destroy Russia energy complex. West living standards drop

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the U.S. economy and the Bloomberg article, which claims that much of the inflation and the increase in gasoline prices and fuel prices is a result of the strikes on Russian refineries. It's Russia's fault, basically, or it's the war, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Ukraine. That's what's driving up prices in the United States. What is your thoughts on the Bloomberg article? Well, the Bloomberg. It was Bloomberg, right? Yeah. It is.

It is. Absolutely. And of course, this is in a kind of a sense true, but not the attacks on the refineries. We've now had articles about this, I believe also in the Ukrainian media, in which they've admitted that the damage to Russian refineries, refinery capacity, has been around 3% of total capacity. And that the Russians who mostly refine oil for their domestic use are no longer short of gasoline that the problems have been resolved because Russian refining capacity is so big that it can absorb the small amount of damage that these strikes have done.

The real reason why energy costs remain high and continue to rise, is because the United States and Europe, over the last couple of months, have made another concerted attempt to drive Russian oil off global markets. The various European sanctions against what is referred to as Russia's shadow fleet, we've discussed the fact what that really is and the fact doesn't exist, and at least not in the way that it's been talked about. But anyway, all of that, the threats to blockade the Denmark Straits, which would be completely contrary to international law and established treaties, by the way. And of course, America's latest sanctions on luke oil and Rosneft and the attempt to pressure India and China to cut back on imports of Russian oil. So, inevitably, however effective or not, these sanctions are, they're increasing instability and tension within global energy markets, and they are causing the price of oil to be higher than it might otherwise have been.

It's utterly predictable. We've been saying this in program after program. and you can see how it's playing out. Three percent of Russia's refineries. That's the number given, right? It's from Ukrainian sources. From Ukrainian sources. And the article states that Russia has been able to supplement the losses,

this 3% by activating other refineries within the country, right? I mean, basically had a mission that this whole Ukraine drone on refineries thing and destroying Putin's energy capacity, energy resources and his war machine has proven to be completely useless. Absolutely. You know, it's so tiresome this again and again. We were saying this very thing back in the summer when there was the biggest excitement, if you remember, about the attacks on the refineries. and people were talking about the queues in the gasoline stations. You remember all of that? And we pointed out on our programs,

and then we had Stanislav come along and do a program with us, in which he said it also, that this is queues in gasoline stations in the holiday areas in Russia, are actually absolutely commonplace in the summer. But anyway, all of that narrative has now collapsed. I mean, it scratched the pain. Given the, that's all it's managed. I mean, given the scale of Russia's fuel and energy complex, the idea that even a large number of drones

with very small warheads would be able to do significant damage on it was always fantastic. And it demonstrates again how completely distorted Western coverage of this war has been. Do you remember that there was a time when they were actually saying that a third of Russia's refining capacity and being destroyed? A third. Three percent. Yeah. Three percent. So a lot of the inflation and a lot of the troubles.

going forward for many economies, especially in Europe, mostly in Europe, is going to result from these sanctions that Trump is placed on Luke Oil and on Rosnev, right? I mean, and this is disrupting the whole energy supply architecture, the whole supply network. Bulgaria is scrambling, Romania is scrambling. Congress now is going. going to place blockades and an embargo on Russia. It seems like the person who should now be blamed for not only the United States' economic woes going forward, but also Europe's, is U.S. President Trump. I mean, he's the one that is putting all of this stuff, putting all this stuff forward.

The sanctions, this embargo, Congress. I mean, he's going along with Lindsey Graham. He's causing chaos. Absolutely. Well, can I just add, I mean, the Europeans have also played a role in this because, of course, in their latest sanctions packages, they've committed themselves to doing a way, to ceasing all imports of oil and LNG from Russia by 2027. So, I mean, they've already had a major energy shock by stopping imports of Russian pipeline gas. in 2022, and we know what that led to. So they've now inflicting another big energy, Russian-related energy shock on themselves as well. Now, put that together with what the United States is doing, with the sanctions against Lukoyle and Rosnev, then you can completely understand why that

is having the effect that it is. Now, to repeat, these sanctions against Lukai oil and Rosnev, will cause Russia some problems. My own view is that they will only be temporary, that over time the energy markets will stabilize, and we're going to see all kinds of workarounds established. So Russian oil will continue to flow to India, for example, except that it will be called oil from Kazakhstan and things of that kind. By the way, straight after Tokayev, the Kazakh leader was in the United States. He immediately flew to Moscow. He's just signed off on a gigantic economic cooperation package with the Russians. And I don't want to go into the weeds of this. I haven't read it all. But I have no doubt that a lot of this is going to go on from this

point going forward. So we'll get gas from Turkmenistan, except it's not really going. gas from Turkmenistan. We're getting oil from Kazakhstan, except it's not really oil from Kazakhstan. There'll be all of these workarounds. But the effect of the workarounds is that energy markets are not going to be operating smoothly and efficiently as they should be. because every time that there's a workaround, inevitably the price has to grow because more middlemen become involved. Those middlemen are going to insist on premiums because obviously there's a risk involved in trading in sanctioned oil. And of course, the oil flows and the gas flows anyway won't be flowing to Europe in the way that they ought to have been doing. So this is going to

create a deeper crisis in the energy markets. And it means also that there's going to be bigger demands on Middle East oil. But remember, Middle East oil is light oil. It's not exactly the same as Russian oil. There's all sorts of uncertainties and imbalances involved with all of that. But to the extent that there's going to be bigger demands on Middle East's oil, that will me, this less Middle East oil to go to Europe, you cannot disrupt energy markets in this way without this having an effect on the price. And yes, we might not be talking about $100 oil. Who knows, maybe that will come. But the point is this. If the price of oil is going to be $70 a barrel, when it might have been $50 a barrel.

That might be less than $100 a barrel, but it's still more than it would otherwise have been. And it means that people who are getting their oil cheaply, like the Chinese, for example, because they've done secure deals with Russians, they're going to be put in a better competitive position. It also means something else. And if we talk about Germany now,

Friedrich Meertz is now having to make promises to German industry. We've just done a big program on Germany's deindustrialization. He's now promising them that because energy costs in Germany are so high, the German government will provide subsidies to offset the energy costs. Now, that solves nothing. All it does is that it, It puts a greater burden on the German budget that can only be covered through higher debt. And it also creates inefficiencies within the German industrial system.

Because German companies are no longer competing on the basis of low energy prices. to the extent that they're competing at all, they're competing on the basis of government subsidies, and anybody who has followed economics and industrial policies knows that that is the high road to nowhere. Some would say to help. Power of Siberia II, construction is beginning, right? Absolutely, yeah. And there'll be power of Siberia three, and power of Siberia four. The Arctic sea route is operating, which means that Russian oil will be transported to China through the Arctic and will be arriving in Chinese ports.

And we'll be getting the Chinese are now buying LNG from sanctioned Russian LNG producers and then paying no attention to American objections about this. So there it is. I mean, the Chinese, who remember have us over, you know, have us in a bind because they now account for so much of global manufacturing that we've seen the crisis it would cause if they were cut off. The United States is not going to rerun its economic war with China any time soon, because the Chinese have this big structural advantage. All that is happening is that China is becoming being made more competitive against the West.

And in the meantime, living standards in the West are falling because ultimately all of these costs are being passed on to the Western public, Western consumers and Western taxpayers. If we go back to Friedrich Metz's subsidies, who pays ultimately for those subsidies? German taxpayers will, even if the subsidies are initially paid through increased debt. Who has to pay the interest on that debt? Who has to repay the debt in the end? German taxpayers do. Meuse is now coming up with a new plan. He wants to create a European stock market.

This is his new way of raising money and funds and all of that. That of course ultimately is a form of debt mutualization. I mean, it's all about ultimately, it's another way of creating Euro bonds by the back door. So German debt increasing, German taxpayers being hammered for it. it, so will European taxpayers across the whole of Europe, they will be hammered for it too. And this at a time when European economies are already stagnating or declining, Germany, I am no doubt at all, that we've now had a four-year recession there, despite what some of the statistics imply. Recession probably across Europe and in Britain too,

and all of this connected to a cost of living crisis, which is visible across Europe, which is driving politics in Europe, and it is driving politics in the United States. Mamdani won the mayor-moral election in New York on the back of the cost of living crisis, which is there also, and which, of course, Donald Trump. was elected to solve. Yeah. What do you make of the Financial Times article? Just a final question, which is claiming that the United States is looking to corner the LNG energy market in Europe. We've seen the announcements from Greece, whether you believe it or not, I'm very skeptical about the whole thing.

But anyway, let's assume that this is going to really happen, that you're going to have the vertical axis corridor, the vertical gas. corridor activated now. And it's going to be the first time that we're going to see gas LNG, U.S. LNG gas going to Greece, to Alexandropoli. From there, that USLNG enters the Greece gas system. And then it works through interconnected pipelines to go to Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, I believe, Ukraine, I believe that's the interconnection. And this is like a south-north interconnected.

These are not new pipelines. These are interconnected pipelines, which are going to route LNG, U.S. LNG gas to southern Europe, to the Balkans. And then you have the U.S. LNG from the north coming into Poland. What do you make of all of this? Well, this has been part of the agenda, I think, all along. I think the United States was never happy about Euro. importing cheaper pipeline gas from Russia. It always wanted to basically corner this market. This was always part of the intention. There was one of the reasons why there was this hostility to Nord Stream,

the Nord Stream pipelines, and in particular to Nord Stream 2. If you go back to Trump's first term, he talked about this all the time. It was already there as part of his agenda then. Now, the problem with that is this. It's twofold. Firstly, It's benefit, well, three things. Firstly, for a short time, it is going to benefit US gas and LNG producers. But US LNG is more expensive, much more expensive, than Russian pipeline gas was. And by the way, it is more expensive than Russian LNG gas was. And it is more expensive, by the way, than Qatari LNG gas is, and it looks as if the United States wants to push that out too. So Europe is exchanging cheaper gas for more expensive American gas.

The problem is if you export gas in these kind of volumes to all sorts of places around the world, which is what the United States is doing, soon or later, what you're going to find is that that's going to affect costs in the United States as well, partly because you have less gas, obviously, to sell to your domestic producers. But secondly, if you are excelling LNG at a high price in Europe, the way the market works is eventually you're going to bring back those high prices to the United States also. That is what always happens with markets. Anybody who works in markets knows this. inevitably, the gas will go where the price is highest. And if you're selling gas at a high price in Europe, you're going to insist on that same high price

if you're a producer in the United States too. So sooner or later, sooner rather than later, it is going to increase energy costs in the United States as well. The other thing, and here I'm not a geologist, but I understand that there's been widespread commentary amongst all kinds of people who perhaps know about these things, that the entire American fossil fuel energy industry has basically peaked and that fairly soon production rates both for oil and gas in the United States are going to start to fall, in which case that's going to push up prices even further and could result in the United States becoming committed to sell gas to all sorts of people around the world that it can't

actually supply because rather than allow shortages in the United States, the United States will keep gas and oil back home. Now, there is another factor here, and again, I'm going a bit further outside, even further outside my knowledge zone, if I can put it like that. But of course, there's a huge debate about AI. There's a lot of expectations about AI. Lots of people are saying that AI is the way, is the route to the industrial manufacturing future. Everybody says that AI requires massive supplies of energy.

Energy costs in China, energy costs in Russia, going to be low. Energy costs in Europe. In the United States, too, going to be much higher than they might otherwise have been. Who is in a better position of long-term advantage? China. China. Well, you know, I do sometimes wonder whether, you know, Lindsay Graham might actually be working for them.

It seems to me he's working all over time to do everything he possibly can to put China in a better position relative to the United States. And of course, not just Lindsey Graham, half of the American government, the Department of within the Treasury that deals with sanctions policy also seems to be working over time on China's behalf. Just say. All right. We will end it there.

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