Earlier high gas prices

The BBC does alternate history!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7820196.stm


Could Communism have lasted longer if it had been propped up by more dollars from selling energy to the capitalists? Might Boris Yeltsin's reform programme have succeeded if he had enjoyed the higher oil prices which came after his time in office?

The effect is not confined to the realms of research and political theory.

So...what if gas prices did get higher sooner? How/why unimportant...Lets just say it happens in the least world affecting way possible (whatever that is)
 
If scientists were unable to discover the tools to discover oil, than the prices will be much higher.

There would probably be a greater push to have alternative energy sources, not for the enviroment, just for economics.

Have you heard of the 1979 oil shortage in America? Maybe if there was no major discovery after that, than there would be higher gas prices.
 

ninebucks

Banned
West of the Iron Curtain, investment in alternative energy sources would increase, but in the east, efforts will be made to keep everyone as dependent on the USSR as possible.
 
Energy prices alone would not have propped up the USSR. By the mid and late eighties, the Soviet Union faced a real dilemma: open up to information exchange or fall into the third world. They chose the former.
 
For the benefit of international clarity here. When referring to 'gas' prices, does the reference mean Natural gas, or gasoline??
 
For the benefit of international clarity here. When referring to 'gas' prices, does the reference mean Natural gas, or gasoline??
Proper gas.
But I suppose oil prices do tend to follow similar trends.

Have you heard of the 1979 oil shortage in America? Maybe if there was no major discovery after that, than there would be higher gas prices
That works.
 
It depend on their ability to transport the gas. It would have required a big investment I belive and that would more likely happen post the fall of the wall.

But that was bad economic times so I dubt the gas prices where that high during the early Jeltzin years. But this was the the first round of the Iraq war, maybe there's a change there somewhere.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Energy prices alone would not have propped up the USSR. By the mid and late eighties, the Soviet Union faced a real dilemma: open up to information exchange or fall into the third world. They chose the former.

Pish posh. The USSR was no economic dynamo, but it was stable enough. It collapsed because it was sold out, not because its economic system was unsaveable.
 
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