I'm John Baxter. I welcome Michael Bernstein. My colleague at the Hoover Institution, watching the price of oil because he's watching the sanctions regime directed against the Russian Federation for its aggression in Ukraine and throughout the world. The price of oil. Over these last weeks of holiday, the price of oil for Brent crude, that's the

measure in Europe, has touched under $60. Headed lower is the expectation. What does that mean

for Russia and for the immediate future? Michael, a very good evening to you. You have for some time

guided us to understand the price of oil is going down,

and as it goes down, the premium that Russia must forgive its customers goes up. So at some point

we're seeing these two stories become in different directions. I tell an anecdote. Speaking to a

colleague about Russ Cosmos, the Russian

space program, the Russian space program believes and says out loud that every penny of gasoline

that Americans don't pay, in other words, our declining price of gasoline costs them money.

They see that connection intimately.

So all of Russia is aware that the Russian planning for this war is no longer adequate.

The question is, how long will the price of oil go down and at what speed? Good evening to you.

I'm going to you, and the answer is the price of oil will go down as long as I can see.

It's a different question because that we don't know, but we have all sorts of forecasts from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs is $52 by the end of 2026.

The consensus, JPMorgan, McKenzie,

the International Energy Agency, OPEC,

that the price of oil will be $55 per barrel,

maybe a bit under that. That's a conservative estimate. So, the numbers are

such that Russia exports 7.3 million barrels per day, which means that for each $10 per barrel

decline in oil, Russia is losing $27 billion.

That's very simple.

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