The Geo-Economic Aspect of Russia’s Policy Towards OPEC and the 2020 Oil Price Crisis

Abstract

This paper aims, through the descriptive analytical method, to clarify the role that Russia’s geo-economic considerations had in aggravating the 2020 oil price crisis, by exploring their effect on its policy towards OPEC. First, the paper examines Russia’s employment of its energy export to Europe via Ukraine as a geo-economic instrument, in which two policies are to be distinguished, namely, pricing policies and supplies suspension, in addition to the growing threat that the American shale boom holds towards Russia, and the opportunities it represents to Europe and the US. Secondly, it discusses the changes that the Russian and OPEC oil policies have undergone since 2014, and how the geo-economics of Russian energy exports interacts with OPEC’s policy shift, and how has all of this affected the 2020 oil price crises. The paper concludes that the geo-economic aspect of Russia’s policy towards OPEC led to an oil price war in 2020 and had an aggravating effect on the sharp drop in oil prices