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palinny

(48 posts)
Thu Apr 11, 2024, 09:20 PM Apr 2024

Regarding oil pricing, the Crimea bridge and railroads

Regarding increases in the price of oil, there are economists and others who believe that oil prices will not increase and may even decrease because Russia must now off-load its excess crude onto the global market since it can't refine all of it anymore due to Ukraine's many successful drone attacks on its refineries and its limited storage facilities. Increasing the global market supply of crude will, in theory, decrease its price. Russia really can't stop pumping crude from the earth for several reasons, one of which is the revenue it provides is still very much needed even if that revenue is less than it had been prior to Ukraine's drone attacks.

Regarding the Crimean bridge, while its destruction would stop the current traffic that does still use it, the larger gain would be to boost Ukraine's troop and civilian morale; its demise would also be a major embarrassment to Putin.

Regarding railroads, think further east. Because the Houthis are attacking shipping in the Red Sea, China has switched its shipping to Russia to trains which means that it would be great if Ukraine could destroy the railroad tracks that China uses to move their and N. Korea's shipments into Russia. There are very limited East-West tracks of the guage that support the trains that China uses, and if the section could be destroyed where the goods must be transferred to Russia's tracks, which use a different guage, the goods would have to be transported by truck which is a much slower form of transport. Hope this made sense. If interested in this topic, "@Prune60" on Twitter has done a fantastic deep dive re Russia's and China's trains/tracks.

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