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Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Chamath
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Chamath @ 00:47:44Inconclusive
economymarkets
Conditional forecast: If Russia reduces its oil exports by 3 million barrels per day relative to early‑2022 levels, global oil prices will rise to roughly $180 per barrel; if Russia reduces exports by 5 million barrels per day, oil prices will rise to roughly $380 per barrel, assuming other producers do not rapidly add offsetting capacity.
They found that if Russia were to cut 3 million barrels of oil, so we would go from being oversupplied by 1 million to undersupplied by two. The price of oil would go to about $180 a barrel. If they cut 5 million… the price of oil could go as high as $380 a barrel.View on YouTube
Explanation

This was an explicitly conditional forecast: extreme price spikes ($180–$380 Brent) were said to occur if Russia cut oil exports by 3–5 million barrels per day (mb/d) from early‑2022 levels and other producers did not quickly offset the loss.

What actually happened:

  1. Russian exports never fell by 3–5 mb/d.

    • The IEA’s September 2022 Oil Market Report estimates Russian total oil exports at 7.6 mb/d, only about 0.39 mb/d below pre‑war levels, not 3–5 mb/d.(iea.org)
    • The December 2022 IEA report shows Russian exports at 8.1 mb/d, the highest since April 2022, with production just 0.2 mb/d below pre‑invasion levels.(iea.org)
    • Other analyses similarly find Russian crude exports remained around or above pre‑war volumes after initial disruptions, as flows were re‑routed to buyers such as China and India.(aa.com.tr)
      In other words, the sharp 3–5 mb/d export collapse assumed in the scenario never occurred.

  2. Other producers did add supply.
    IEA reports from mid‑2022 onward note rising global supply from OPEC+ (especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE) and non‑OPEC producers like the US and Canada, which helped keep the market "comfortably supplied" rather than in the extreme undersupply assumed in the scenario.(iea.org)

  3. Oil prices never reached $180, let alone $380.
    Brent crude peaked around $133–139/bbl in early March 2022 during the initial shock of Russia’s invasion, then fell back.(en.wikipedia.org)
    Annual data for 2022–2024 show Brent averages near $100 in 2022 and around $80–83 in 2023–2024, far below $180.(app.macrotrends.net)
    But since the prerequisite 3–5 mb/d export cut never occurred, prices never had a chance to test the scenario.

Because the key condition (a 3–5 mb/d Russian export cut without rapid offset elsewhere) did not happen, the forecast about what prices would be under that condition cannot be empirically judged as right or wrong. It remains a counterfactual scenario analysis rather than a testable prediction about the world that actually unfolded.