International politics and oil trade: evidence from Russian oil exports

Oil is often considered a “political” good affected by the changes in international political relations. Using a novel dataset on Russian oil-exporting companies over 1999–2011, we find that a worsening in political relations between Russia and an oil-importing country results in a considerable reduction in oil shipments by Russian oil exporting firms into that country, the effect being stronger for state-owned firms. Using leadership changes in oil importing countries as exogenous shocks to political relations, we show that this relationship is causal. However, total exports revenue of Russian oil exporting firms is not affected much, as they seem to be able to recover losses incurred in one market by increasing their sales in other markets. At the same time, the countries importing oil from Russia (especially the ones heavily dependent on Russian oil) see their total oil and energy imports decline (JEL F51, F65, G15, Q34).