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> are we really stopping the conflict by eg. banning import of russian oil?

I wouldn’t know.

But I can say the fungibility (or not) of oil is necessarily equivalent for both importers and exporters.

Consider the implications if it were trivial to change markets: Russia losing X units of exports per year to the EU and increasing exports to China and India by a total of X, means China and India are buying X fewer units from not-Russia, which means the EU could buy X more units on the everyone-else marketplace.



This assumes that oil consumption is fixed, rather than China and India increasing their usage while Europe stagnates.


Yep, price goes down, people produce more, stuff gets cheaper, and they export more. Not us (europeans) though.


They can't get the oil, because there are not any (additional) pipelines. They can't really ship the oil, because there's not enough (additional) capacity to do that. Most tankers can't get insured and only smaller tankers can transit ports available to Russia (or they have to transfer oil mid ocean). As a result Turkey, India, and China will get marginally more 10-30% cheaper oil from Russia, but that pushes their imports from the middle east down... which lowers prices in Europe!

Realistically, Turkey China and India are mostly exporters. When Europe and the US go into recession, they won't need as much oil because they won't be exporting as much (they are the dominant importers)... and that likely means that Russia turns off wells when their storage fills up (soon). Those wells are slow to restart. The rest of OPEC replaces their oil (at somewhat higher prices) for the next few years.

What is an immediate concern is food, oil, and fertilizer not being exported from Ukraine (can't plant/harvest or ship) for much of the developing world. Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka... Sudan are all very dependent on wheat, sunflower oil, and fertilizer from eastern Ukraine. Even India will be quite affected. See how evil EU starves the poor! Only beautiful Russia can save them!




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