They’ve been selling oil and gas this entire time, there isn’t any need to secure customers, they already have them. The discount is essentially the effect that they have a smaller pool of buyers, and those buyers piss off a number of other players (countries, buyers, sellers, insurance, etc) by buying from Russia. A few buyers have to also contend with paying a country that has demonstrated a willingness to invade their neighbors. Many of the former Soviet states, for example, have continued to buy Russian oil this entire time, while putting in big efforts to transition away. Their oil and gas purchases have been heavily criticized by people who don’t understand how long it takes to change energy sources.
Russia is obviously able to expand sales to more customers, and diversification makes sense as well. They don’t want to be reliant on one or two big customers here. Also, selling at a discount on spot market still brings in far more revenue than long term pipeline contracts with Europe did. Meanwhile, the west is literally facilitating a genocide in Gaza and people living in western countries have zero moral ground to bray about Russia at this point. Finally, not sure what these big efforts to transition away are exactly. So far, it’s pretty clear that Russia has done far more to transition away from Europe than the other way around.
They’ve been selling oil and gas this entire time, there isn’t any need to secure customers, they already have them. The discount is essentially the effect that they have a smaller pool of buyers, and those buyers piss off a number of other players (countries, buyers, sellers, insurance, etc) by buying from Russia. A few buyers have to also contend with paying a country that has demonstrated a willingness to invade their neighbors. Many of the former Soviet states, for example, have continued to buy Russian oil this entire time, while putting in big efforts to transition away. Their oil and gas purchases have been heavily criticized by people who don’t understand how long it takes to change energy sources.
Russia is obviously able to expand sales to more customers, and diversification makes sense as well. They don’t want to be reliant on one or two big customers here. Also, selling at a discount on spot market still brings in far more revenue than long term pipeline contracts with Europe did. Meanwhile, the west is literally facilitating a genocide in Gaza and people living in western countries have zero moral ground to bray about Russia at this point. Finally, not sure what these big efforts to transition away are exactly. So far, it’s pretty clear that Russia has done far more to transition away from Europe than the other way around.