For those of you who aren’t familiar, Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical analyst and speaker—and he’s published a number of books on geopolitical topics (I’ve read and recommend two: The Accidental Superpower and The Absent Superpower). He regularly publishes a newsletter, and occasionally publishes video clips pertaining to geopolitical issues.
As you might imagine, he’s been extremely active during the war, and has had several bits focused primarily on the current and eventual impact of this war on the global oil supply. He doesn’t directly relate it to economics (and definitely doesn’t give investing advice), but I think it’s super useful information and has helped to shape some of my recent trades.
Anyhow, here are some of the more recent clips:
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March 23: Russian Refineries’ Reduced Runs
- TLDW; There are signs emerging now Russia’s 4+ million daily barrels of crude are going to disappear in the very near term (weeks), regardless of what happens with the war now.
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March 22: Russian Oil’s Vanishing Act
- TLDW; China isn’t going to benefit from this situation (in terms of oil) and can’t take in more Russian oil even if they want to due to infrastructure/logistics problems. Furthermore, Russia does not have the ability to operate their infrastructure for any length of time—all of the expertise (Exxon,Schlumberger, Haliburton, etc) has already pulled out, and China is even worse at this level of “oil tech” than Russia.
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March 17: Deal With the Devil(s)
- TLDW; Venezuela, Saudia Arabia, and Iran aren’t going to make up the deficit in oil production that this war will result in. It is possible that Biden’s administration could cancel all exports of crude from the U.S. resulting in a large break in oil prices between the U.S. and the rest of the world; e.g. $70/barrel ceiling in the U.S., $150/barrel floor in the rest of the world.
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March 8: China, Oil, and the Ukraine War
- TLDW; Mostly old news by now.
There are many other viewpoints he’s shared recently, but this is most of it as far as oil is concerned.