Russia’s Unexpected Advantage In The Oil Price War

While the ruble is now at its lowest level against the dollar in four years, the cheaper ruble has a silver lining for Russia’s oil producers in the oil price war for market share with Saudi Arabia.  The collapse of the OPEC+ deal and oil prices has hit Russia’s financial markets and currency, leading to a sharp drop in the ruble versus the U.S. dollar. The lower the ruble slides against the U.S. dollar, the lower the production costs of Russian oil companies in U.S. dollars are.  To be sure, a crumbling ruble is not the preferred…