As challenges mount for Russian oil refineries in the midst of the Ukraine invasion, their production lines are slowing down sooner than predicted, and this could bring problems that last for decades.

Some refineries are already stopping their runs. Why are they cutting back on output? Demand is dropping dramatically. Between a mix of bans on Russian energy imports, insurers wary of dealing with Moscow, sanctions on Russian banks, and a significant amount of tanker crews, port workers, and collective voluntary boycotts of Russian crude, Russia’s worst-case scenario is already unfolding.

If oil fields, pipelines, refineries, storage facilities, and suppliers don’t have customers, oil stays in the ground, and pipelines lay idle.

Once you shut stuff down in Siberia, and when you’re dealing with pipe systems that are literally thousands of miles long, before you reopen, you have to check every seal and every weld on every pipe section all the way through, and in the time that it takes to do that, the wells will degrade, and you’ll probably need to re-drill most of them.

The last time the Russians shut everything in, it was 1989. It took them 32 years to get back to where their production was. They’d only reached that level last December. So big deal.

I’d originally forecasted that was gonna happen this year, probably in two to three months, but things are happening faster than I anticipated.

Now that suggests that within the next 30 days, we’re probably going to see backups through the entire Russian system. So they’re going to have to start shutting in production, meaning that just a few weeks from now, we are going to have a very, very, very different sort of oil market, ’cause you’re looking at four million barrels a day of Russian crude. Maybe you’ll see even a little more just going away.

It’ll be the single largest disruption to oil markets in human history.

For a Russia without foreign investment, foreign oil services firms, foreign technology, and foreign buyers, the future looks bleak indeed.