The Barrel Game: How Trump’s Tariffs Are Really About Power, Not Putin

Why the global oil market is too tight, Russia’s cash flow is resistant, and Trump’s tariff war is aimed at something else entirely.

101.85. 102.74. 103.54.

Those are the global daily petroleum and liquid fuel consumption figures in millions of barrels per day for 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Production: 102.21. 102.80. 104.61.

Talk about a line on line. This is what equilibrium looks like when supply chains are coordinated, demand is predictable, and the oil cartel is in sync with Western producers.

No glut, no squeeze. Just balance — and a market walking a tightrope. The oil world we sip in. Day in, day out.

In June 2025, Russia produced 9 million barrels of crude oil per day. Add condensates, dark liquids, and refinery gains, and you're looking at a figure comfortably north of 10 million barrels daily.

The question now becomes: how much of that can the world realistically afford to remove from the market? The answer is not much. Maybe — just maybe — 1 million barrels per day. That’s the outer limit before the entire system starts to wobble.