Russia’s quest for energy ‘technological sovereignty’, part 1

The country inherited a near self-sufficient oil and gas industry from the USSR, and it is working fast to eliminate shortfalls in its domestic capability, where advanced drilling and subsea technologies remain a vulnerability

Western sanctions imposed in the wake of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 cut Russia’s oil and gas industry off from most best-in-class technologies, equipment and services in the world. Yet, in many areas, the sector has proved resilient to this pressure. Production and refining runs have both fallen from pre-war levels, but due to OPEC+ quotas and Ukrainian drone strikes respectively, and not as a result of sanctions. Simply put, the impact of sanctions blocking Russia’s access to Western technology and equipment should not be overstated. This resilience owes a lot to the fact Russia inherited a near self-sufficient oil and gas industry from the Soviet Union, with a