Oil is trading at around $30 a barrel now, significantly lower than it was 18 months ago when it averaged around $110. Saudi market manipulations and US shale gas are partly to blame for the crash, but regardless of who’s responsible, everyone agrees that certain countries are taking quite a hit, especially Russia.
The ruble has dropped to a record low against the dollar and concerns are being voiced about the budget, which was made on the assumption that the price would be $50 a barrel. On the Western front, Wall Street has been sluggish, and there’s a fear that a mass bankruptcy in the shale sector could herald a new global economic crash way worse than the one in 2008.
Andrei Fyodorov, Russia’s ex Deputy Foreign Minister and Director of the Centre for Political Studies think-tank (studio guest); Justin Dargin, a global energy scholar at the University of Oxford; and Alexander Zotin, financial analyst at "Dengy" (Russia’s leading business weekly) joined us to discuss the issue.
