Post-Soviet Russian oil and gas part 1: Privatisation and nationalisation

The Russian hydrocarbons industry has evolved greatly over the past three decades. In the first of a two-part series for Petroleum Economist's 90th anniversary, we look at the post-Soviet period and how control of oil and gas went from the state to private hands and back again.

It is a period of turbulent change for Russian oil and gas. In some areas, the industry could take years, if not decades, to recover from the self-included crises caused by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In others, the sector has shown surprising resilience to unprecedented sanctions and the economic and political turmoil resulting from the conflict. Of course, turbulent change is nothing new for Russia, and oil and gas has often been at the heart of that change since the fall of the Soviet Union. Collapse, privatisation and renationalisation Following the break-up of the USSR, Russia’s oil industry essentially fell apart. Soviet oil production—the highest in the world in the 1980s—dropped by