Mitigating Considerations: It is a matter of public record that the major German banks (who hold somewhere between DM 6-10 billion in uninsured Soviet debt) have with the possible exception of Commerzbank already established loan loss reserves which cover 100 percent of Soviet debt exposure.
One should note, however, that resources are not the same as reserves and economic feasibility of extraction needs to be established first to upgrade the classification of assets from resources to reserves.
But now our strategic reserves and the entire IEA system may be called on to cope with what they were originally established for in the 1970s a major disruption in the Persian Gulf.