No point in concealing the fact that oil and gas exports and petroleum price play important role in the Russian economy However there is no point in highlighting this fact too much since it borders with spreading the myth that Russian economy is only oil and gas and nothing or almost nothing else Few facts Significant growth of oil prices started only in 2004 2005 but the Russian economy started growth and rather large growth well in 1999 2000 Russian economy is not only export The recovery of oil and gas and other minerals was only 9 of GDP in 2011 and only 6 8 was oil and gas with figures not much larger in the previous years The share of oil and gas in GDP gradually falls Unprocessed oil and gas takes only 45 of Russian exports More of the rest are oil based products and fuels but this is considered manufacturing So the phrase in one of the last edits about the oil and gas which is the majority of Russian exports is oversimplified and certainly not correct if we speak about raw materials vs manufacturing Federal budget grew much faster in the last decade than oil prices And it is not clear whether a five fold increase in price of oil and gas is correct description it was four fold increase in 2000 2011 but seven times increase in 1999 2011 In 2008 only 23 of federal budget revenues came from exports oil and gas customs tariffs and 18 from taxes on petroleum and mining companies However when we speak about the consolidated budget federal budget regional budgets the similar figures for oil and gas would be just 14 and 10 All this means the following The economic growth in the early 2000s was not very much dependent on oil and gas prices So it is incorrect to ascribe early economic growth under Putin to petroleum prices Overall the dependence whatever its scale of the Russian economy on oil and gas is not Putin s invention and the share of this sector in the Russian GDP actually is falling However oil and gas money constituted a very large share of the federal but not so consolidated budget in the Putin era This means that it is more correct to speak that it is not the Russian economy on the whole but the federal budget which is dependent on oil and gas And a qualitative addition to the figures Russia is a northern cold country and Russia is industrial country which means that it needs lots of fuel for itself but it is also a very resource rich country so no wonder that it produces much energy have lots of facilities for that and takes the opportunity to export abroad a lot every country in similar conditions does that the U S Canada Norway This is not good or bad feature of the economy just the fact Talk We need to revert your additions on oil and gas simply because they are not entirely correct factually and because all the key information in more generalized and accurate form is already in the lead But if you have proposals to make some important additions in accurate wording let s discuss them Talk