Putin's oil war with the West comes at the expense of his allies

Russia's use of energy as a weapon in its showdown with the West is redrawing the geopolitical map, but it could strain ties with allies like Iran and Venezuela.< /p>

As Russia scrambles to find new buyers for its oil to circumvent ever-tighter Western sanctions , it is cutting the market share of two of its allies - Iran and Venezuela - and setting up a price war that could hurt them all.

Competition for sales to Asia has already forced Venezuela and Iran to cut crude sharply to try to hold on to what little oil is available for their own sanctioned exports, analysts and oil traders say. /p>

And although Iran and Venezuela publicly state that they remain close s of Russia, experts expect that if the oil battle escalates, it will increase tensions with the Kremlin even as its leader, Vladimir V. Putin, works to cement his alliances. On Tuesday, his government announced it would make a rare trip outside the country next week to the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Oil competition sparked by the he Russian invasion of Ukraine already appears to bring Venezuela one step closer to the West, after years of a deep freeze in relations due to electoral and human rights abuses by the country's authoritarian ruler. America's newest oil producer, Chevron, is in talks with the Venezuelan government, according to a Venezuelan oil executive and local official.

Any possible deal to bring in more crude Venezuelan oil in world markets would help the United States, which is increasingly desperate to cut oil prices to limit the damage to Western economies from the war and sanctions on Russian oil. The economic fallout reduces support for Ukraine in its fight against its biggest neighbor.

"War shows that countries have interests, not enemies or friends," said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil policy expert at Rice University.

Rising energy prices have given fossil fuels an importance they hadn't enjoyed in the 1970s, amplifying the effect of Kremlin politics far beyond the battlefield at a time when many world leaders hoped to begin phasing out oil to tame climate change .

Daniel Yergin, leading energy expert and author of "The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations", said the energy crisis untangled the last vestiges of the post-Cold War global economy, heralding a new era of great-power competition in an increasingly fragmented world.

"Oil and natural gas," he said, " became there at the end of this new struggle. »

ImageA refinery in Tuapse, Russia. Russia is one of the world's largest producers of natural gas and oil, giving it leverage in key markets of the global economy. of oil and gas - and the fact that much of the world's supply comes from Russia - has been Mr Putin's most potent weapon against the West, giving him geopolitical clout far beyond his country's position as the 11th largest economy in the world.

This was not the case earlier in the war, when the United States began to push its allies to punish Russia, which led to the promise of an oil embargo by Europe. The hope was that the cup...