The Oil Drum

I agree with you that Russia's oil and gas production will decline, sooner rather than later. Oil export revenues did not jump in 2000, they jumped after 2004. The post collapse production decline was already over by 2000. But the export revenue increase in the last three years is only part of the general increase in government revenues and private sector profitability in the last eight years. Also, until Putin's second term a major part of the oil revenues was being siphoned off into offshore banks by oligarchs like Khodorkovsky. Much like in Venezuela until "petrotyrant" Chavez and his "socialism".

One of the biggest factors in the 2000 GDP growth was import substitution driven by the devaluation of the ruble in the wake of the 1998 financial collapse. The 1998 financial crisis was the best thing to have happen since the collapse of communism. It killed off the monetarist voodoo economics that was destroying Russian industry and turning people into paupers.

Perhaps all the sanctimonious windbags in the western media and punditocracy should take into account the experience of the average Russian in the last 20 years when trying to explain the political evolution of the country.