Funny thing is that something like half of Russian gas goes through Ukraine and some more is just across the border in Belarus. AFAIK that hasn't stopped. Just goes to show you the complexity of international relations.
Makes you wonder if one side or the other will “accidentally” damage those pipelines. Like obviously they can’t overtly do it but you know, stuff gets damaged every day in combat zones… it would certainly immensely hurt Russia’s strategic position to have their gas exports cut off.
If Polish-Russian gas trade is anything to go by, they won’t. They will just one day cut off deliveries and communicate that there is unknown technical difficulty and they are working on resolving it.
Better yet, Ukraine should build some well fortified military bases on top of/next to the pipelines. It seems like Russia's only advantage in this war right now is artillery. But if an errant shell could shut down one of the last remaining sources of revenue, maybe the will think twice?
> Better yet, Ukraine should build some well fortified military bases on top of/next to the pipelines. It seems like Russia's only advantage in this war right now is artillery. But if an errant shell could shut down one of the last remaining sources of revenue, maybe the will think twice?
That would only hurt Ukraine's allies. Russia is probably going to end up pivoting to exporting energy to China, anyway.
Russia's going to see this invasion through. It's clear that there's not some "one weird [economic] trick" that will get them to turn around and go home. The only way that's going to happen is if they're defeated militarily.
> IIRC there are no pipelines between Russia's main oil fields and China, all the pipelines go to Europe
That doesn't appear to be correct. It apparently has a pipeline, also ships LNG, and is building an even bigger pipeline to come online in a couple years:
> Feb 4 (Reuters) - Russia has agreed a 30-year contract to supply gas to China via a new pipeline and will settle the new gas sales in euros, bolstering an energy alliance with Beijing amid Moscow's strained ties with the West over Ukraine and other issues.
> Gazprom , which has a monopoly on Russian gas exports by pipeline, agreed to supply Chinese state energy major CNPC with 10 billion cubic metres of gas a year, the Russian firm and a Beijing-based industry official said.
> First flows through the pipeline, which will connect Russia's Far East region with northeast China, were due to start in two to three years, the source said in comments that were later followed by an announcement of the deal by Gazprom.
> Russia already sends gas to China via its Power of Siberia pipeline, which began pumping supplies in 2019, and by shipping liquefied natural gas (LNG). It exported 16.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to China in 2021.
> They can just shut it off voluntarily on their side and use that for leverage.
The sanctions have conveniently carved out exceptions for settling energy, wheat, barley, and other commodity contracts, and it's these contract settlements that have prevented the Ruble's 50% collapse from becoming a 90% collapse.
Starving the West of energy and food would definitely be a fun bargaining chip and/or tit-for-tat escalation play, but I don't think the Russian economy has the stomach for it.
Russia sells gas in Europe for a profit. In China, not so much. Turning off the gas to Europe means turning off the majority of its income, it's not going to happen.
> it would certainly immensely hurt Russia’s strategic position to have their gas exports cut off.
Would it?
Surely a few days of gas exports aren't that important to their economy, just because they can average the losses over many many more days of gas exports.
Now europe has a reason to let russia win, and repair the pipeline. A few days without heating would damage europe (though I'm unsure how many days worth of gas europe has stored).
I guess I could see it hurting Russia, because they lose a valuable resource and the threat to cut it off, but I could also see it helping them.
> I never knew until recently how tied up Russia's oil strategy was to their military / political thinking.
Oil strategy is tied to everyone's military/political thinking. Especially the top oil producers like Russia, US, etc. US was the top oil producer from 1850s to 1950s. It's one of the reasons we became a world power. We aren't maintaining military bases in saudi arabia because we are fans of islam. We didn't invade iraq because of freedom or democracy. We've been trying to topple venezuela for 2 decades because they have the largest oil reserves in the world. Some even think we are suddenly concerned about muslims in xinjiang because the chinese found oil there.
Germany invaded the soviet to take the baku oil fields. Oil has been central to most major world invents the last 150 years. What do you think our issue with iran is? Their huge oil and gas fields. You could argue the ukraine war is about oil and gas too.
If we ever got fusion energy or anything like that, one of the major sources of war would be gone.
' Oil strategy is tied to everyone's military/political thinking. '
Now people may begin to understand why Biden's son was installed in 2014 on board of directors of a Ukraine oil producer at 50,000 USD per month. It was not by happenstance nor for knowledge of oil & gas.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27403003
More convinced that the only thing stopping wars will be energy abundance not reliant on fossil fuels. Countries will still fight over natural resources, but probably less
There's an argument here that this war is a step in the transition from wars over "oil" (read: energy supply) to wars over water. There's a little bit of both here, and it's made the war difficult for outsiders to read.
As I understand it, there has also been some conflict over the water supply to Crimea, which comes in by aqueduct over the isthmus towards Ukraine in the north (hence Russia's focus on conquering the area inland from that border).
If only they used the profits to build a great economy with more to offer. They have no shortage capable and even brilliant people, but they've got a management problem at the national level.
It's understandable that there are a ton of chemical refineries near the mouth of the Mississippi because it allows for easier transport of refined goods to other countries. Less understandable when they're everywhere else in the state, except for the part where local governments give quarter-century and longer sweetheart tax break deals for these companies to come in, pollute the local environment, and pay no taxes on the real estate they're operating on. One of the main reasons that the education and social services systems in the state are so horrendously poor is because there's no tax revenue.
And even by those standards, Russia is a kleptocrat's wet dream.
Norway seems to have avoided it the past few decades by following the advice Tony Montana didn’t: don’t get high on your own supply. They dampen the effects of easy oil money by putting most of the profits into their sovereign wealth fund and, unlike just about every other oil producing country, taxing fossil fuels even harder than countries like Germany and Denmark (which tax them pretty hard).
They also have significant market share exporting certain commodities like Nickel, Palladium &c. -- but not close to gas/oil, true.
Since new investment into fossil fuel projects will go to nearly zero from here (and old equipment becomes defunct unless it is replaced), expect there gas/oil exports to decline significantly in the next years/decades. Putin didn't only mess up Ukraine now, he also wrecked his own country for at least a generation to come.
As a foreigner, I can say that whatever it is you’re thinking of isn’t even newsworthy on the international stage.
What Putin has done to Russia is like if an American president had invaded a neighbour and the result was simultaneously $4 trillion central bank assets held abroad getting frozen, most of the billionaires becoming personae non grata in half the planet, a lot of smart people leaving the country as quickly as possible, the stock markets crashing about as hard as the Great Depression, direct refusal by major shipping companies to deal with the nation, and the currency halving relative to everything else, while also finding the hard way that all the military hardware had been “maintained” with cheap lookalike products and the cost difference pocketed by corruption at an unknown part of the chain.
He probably believes what most of my relatives (most of whom are Texans) do: this is all Biden’s fault for not letting petroleum producers drill and frack wherever and however they want; Putin never would have tried this if he knew the US could just overwhelm the oil market.
They can’t bear to consider that this is something of a last hurrah as Europe tries to wean themselves from the petro drug. There’s plenty of non-petroleum-related business going on in Texas, but the semi-rural power base relies on oil to stay rich.
There's a couple great books, The Prize and The Quest, by Daniel Yergin, who is an energy expert. It greatly clarifies the current situation.
Update: I just saw he's published a newer book as well, https://www.amazon.com/New-Map-Energy-Climate-Nations/dp/159...
"The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations" which I haven't read, but probably just updates the story as it evolved over the past 10 years.
This is the most interesting thing i saw in a while. It is tragic that our news channels are incapable of delivering such insights- german newspaper/tv all fell for putins silly „historic“ farytales..
For reference, Yamal was only re-opened a week or two ago. I don't think you can read too much into it closing again (yet). Yamal can give 33 billion cubic meters a year and Nord Stream 1 can give 55 billion.
As far as "bids" remaining, it could be something as benign as not having any demand at the price, or currency/volatility issues.
What i didn't realize until very recently was that natural gas can be liquefied and sold on an open market like a barrel of oil. With that in mind, these pipelines are not as critical. Additionally, pipelines operate by contracts which offer very generous discounts years in advance; Liquefied gas, on the other hand, is a commodity and is sold at market prices.
Seems logical to assume that Russian gas will still be sold, and that there will be buyers. Russia will be offering substantial discounts on it as well.
While natural gas can be liquefied, the infrastructure for LNG is much less mature than for gas pipelines. You still need to have the LNG terminals to be able to import the gas (and also at the export terminals as well).
Historically, LNG import terminals are concentrated in East Asia, which is generally too far away from major gas producers for a pipeline to be worthwhile to build but the energy consumption was high enough to warrant investing in such infrastructure. The US also built several LNG import terminals, but then the fracking boom caused so much natural gas to be produced that several of these were converted into LNG export terminals instead.
One of the side effects of the costs of building LNG infrastructure is that natural gas prices are very heavily regionalized: natural gas is far cheaper in the US (where it's pipeline delivery) than it is in Japan (with LNG imports).
Thanks, this explains a lot; Do you think it's reasonable to assume that due to pipeline closures and Russian isolation, gas prices will keep rising? I'm reading up on this selfishly - as i purchased some natural gas stocks like $OVV and $AR as the conflict was unwinding.
Is LNG route open for Russia? Seems like it's their only option at this point. And Pipelines are simply not safe as it should be easy to sabotage them for the enemy combatants.
I also noticed that in EU there are rumblings about legislation that would force Gas companies to be taxed at a higher rate to continue to pave the way for green energy. Not sure what are the prospects of this in the US.
In the near term (days to weeks, maybe a few months), I would expect gas prices to be more likely to rise rather than fall. I can't speculate well about longer term because there are too many variables in play: while peak demand could be relatively well-forecasted based on climate change legislation, the supply side of the equation is difficult to forecast.
> Is LNG route open for Russia?
I am not an expert on these affairs, but I believe Russia doesn't have a lot of LNG export capability at the moment, and LNG export terminals are not something quickly built. It's more likely to me that Russia shifts its gas exports away from Europe and into China via existing pipelines, rather than investing in LNG export capabilities.
It is more expensive. The reason why Lithuania and Poland built LNG terminals is not because it is economical or fun compared to pipelines. It is a pure sunk cost. The reason is to secure their supply incase Russia wants to exert influence through the gas supply like it did with Ukraine until 2015 when Ukraina started buying all gas from the EU instead.
They therefore cap the price they pay to what is available on the open LNG market, if the regular supply does not come through.
This is like comparing buying bottled water instead of using the taps in your house. Yes, technically you can do this, but transporting that bottled water is painful, and at the scale of a whole country doing it, is a huge logistical challenge. You could eventually get to the point where LNG replaced the pipelines, but that's not going to happen overnight, and the European energy grids need to heat homes this winter.
That's not quite it. The bottled water / tap water comparison is still transporting exactly the same commodity. Liquefied natural gas, however, is much denser than its non-liquefied equivalent.
Per Wikipedia, Nordstream 1 can deliver 55 G(m^3)/yr of natural gas. Per a US government source (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50598), the United States has an LNG export capacity of about 12 G(ft^3)/day, or about 120G(m^3)/yr.
I imagine the operational costs of a direct pipeline are lower than the cost of liquefaction, transport, and re-gasification, but from the notice that LNG exists this is probably has an O(1) effect on price, not O(10).
Fortunately, Europe is also beginning to exit "this winter," so the energy situation is less dire than if this invasion had occurred in December going into January.
I am quite afraid of Russia shutting off the gas and oil supply. I hope Europe doesn't give up on sanctions then, at least not right away.
Betting on Russia needing the income more than we need the resources.
Power will go out completely around here and partially in many other regions, but we can live through that.
Having solar (plus wind and batteries) is a major boon, and this would undoubtedly drive demand through the roof once people have no choice. Sadly, there isn't enough supply for everyone, especially power hungry industrial sites, and trucks/cars still run on fuel.
Solar concentrators would be easy to start producing locally, but they don't run well in cold temperatures and cloudy weather, plus they still need batteries of some sort.
I am certainly empathetic to having power and lights go out... In the midwestern USA, we survived last year with rotating blackouts during an unexpected winter storm that reached deep into Texas to parts that haven't seen snow in 50 years, and some parts ever receiving snow on recorded record.
That being said, people are dying because of cheap power and gas. I know it's easy for me to say halfway across the world from behind a keyboard, but I really hope you guys elect to have your power shut off (If that's what it takes) to help the people of the Ukraine. Russia knows Europe is energy dependent on it, and it's the one area we haven't totally cut them off on. It's a small sacrifice that would save a hundred thousand lives.
In the midwest, the grid operators had a plan to divert available power to critical places first like hospitals, traffic lights, etc. It was freezing hold and I had power for 45m every 2 hours for a few days. I survived, there were places I could go, life went on.
While what happened in Texas is good for empathy, it’s not exactly the same. The power outages there were due to a poorly regulated electrical market where the power stations froze in predictable ways.
Notice that it was only Texas utilities that experienced the most major issues.
> The power outages there were due to a poorly regulated electrical market where the power stations froze in predictable ways.
There were plenty of issues with the electrical system, but the Texas Nat Gas infrastructure was also culpable. They had wells that froze up. Wells also often produce water that can freeze in cold conditions and block a well. There are mitigations for this that were often not in place in TX.
They had also failed to submit paperwork indicating their electrically pumping stations were critical infrastructure and should not be shut off as many of them were.
>While what happened in Texas is good for empathy, it’s not exactly the same. The power outages there were due to a poorly regulated electrical market where the power stations froze in predictable ways.
Situation in West Europe is also based in energy politics, a lack of energy security planning, and no impact studies from shutting down nuclear power plants.
There are parallels in my mind in that both are a product of short sighted ideological thinking.
Neither statement is true but is oft repeated. I can bring some clarity:
A poorly regulated electrical market doesn't make a poor user experience. In fact, it was government meddling that created the crisis: Forced closure of coal plants before suitable replacements that could withstand 100 weather year events were available. The free market in Texas has and was leaps and bounds ahead of other markets in green energy production. Texas has also wanted to build countless nuclear projects that are stonewalled by the NRC and other green energy projects that die due to EPA or other local agencies. Believe it or not, green energy companies play dirty too and leverage government bureaucracy to stifle competition and expansion of green energy.
Secondly, it was not Only Texas. I live in Kansas and travel to Missouri weekly and we certainly had outages. The reason is all of these areas are covered by the "Southwest Power Pool" which is a generation pool which agree to sell energy to each other and help out during extreme events (an oversipmlication, but good enough for a HN comment). Texas operators trade energy in multiple markets so nearby locations were affected. My home state, produces nearly 2/3 of its energy from green sources: wind and nuclear and the excess is sold to the SPP and can be consumed in Texas.
Texas is in fact the _ideal_ energy market, as new ideas can compete immediately and directly and operate on small scales. We'd be doing ourselves a huge favor to operate more grids like this as it lower the entry bar for clean energy startups.
> Secondly, it was not Only Texas. I live in Kansas and travel to Missouri weekly and we certainly had outages.
ERCOT was down easily 30-35GW (40-50%) of generation and cut power for days across large swaths of the state. SPP had outages, but not nearly as extensive in terms of MW shortfall, number of customers impacted, or duration of the impact.
> My home state, produces nearly 2/3 of its energy from green sources: wind and nuclear and the excess is sold to the SPP and can be consumed in Texas.
The only part of Texas it can really be consumed in are the parts of Texas served by SPP in the extreme NOrth (that are interconnected with the rest of the Eastern Interconnection). There are a couple small (<1GW) DC tie lines into ERCOT, but not nearly enough to do the sort of bulk power transport that would've been helpful during last February.)
> The reason is all of these areas are covered by the "Southwest Power Pool" which is a generation pool which agree to sell energy to each other and help out during extreme events (an oversipmlication, but good enough for a HN comment). Texas operators trade energy in multiple markets so nearby locations were affected.
SPP and ERCOT both have 'generation pools' and markets that enable them to serve load across their service areas. What SPP has that ERCOT does not are extensive connections to neighboring pools (MISO, PJM, etc.) and more adequately winterized generation and fuel supply infrastructure. The CEO of SPP gave an interview on an energy podcast last spring where she directly credits the ability bring in power from PJM and MISO as helping SPP serve its load. That sort of option wasn't even available to ERCOT.
Notably, the other option unavailable to ERCOT is exporting/selling wind power to neighboring ISO's.... The Texas focus on avoiding federal energy regulation is costing them the ability to sell one of their strong suits into a broader market.
As a German I'm uncertain of what I'd want. I can totally imagine next winter being harsh, lacking power and heating. I'm less afraid of that than I am of it being a cause for people to use it to build national pride along the lines of "do without for the sake of Germany and your fellow man"...
I don't think I'll have a problem living without heating in the winter... electricity is probably harder. I think the media message that will go along with it might change something in Germany I don't want to see.
Russia has no need of the income because it is in a denomination they can’t now spend.
Countries only need to export to the extent that they can get imports. Anything beyond that is a waste - and clearly so now that foreign reserves are being frozen and defaulted on.
Russia is keeping the gas on to keep the EU out of the war.
They keep nukes to keep EU (well, NATO) out of the war. The gas is flowing because it's their last card, if they stop the gas they will lose it and EU will be forced to look for alternatives asap and won't come back.
Selling more to China is not a good short option because as I understand there is no infrastructure, most pipes go to the west. Russia needs this money to trade with China, they won't accept Rubble.
In very international trade the buyer uses the currency they have and the seller gets the currency they want. The finance system is there to make the match.
We don’t trade using pebbles. We trade using promises that are created on demand.
What's the round-trip efficiency of such a system? There are multiple lossy conversions, you'd be doing well to hit 50% if the gas is simply burned to spin a turbine.
Solar and wind are already far cheaper than gas or nuclear plants, and they’re still getting cheaper while gas and nuclear are getting more expensive (although to be fair, gas has only recently gotten more expensive). In so far that the economics in favor of renewables+storage don’t work out yet factoring in conversion losses, it is all but inevitable that they will.
Nuclear is a lot cheaper than solar, it simply depends on the nuclear plant model. Russians are the world leaders regarding nuclear plants time to market and costs (4 years).
> Also, I wouldn’t put too much faith into Russian numbers for their nuclear projects.
It's not propaganda because we are talking about a free market here. Countries around the world buy nuclear reactors from Russia. They are by far the biggest exporter.
Russia is not needed though, China is very cost effective and their popular model is in fact American based. Their other popular model is a french derivative. Their secret sauce is to build refined second generation models with added safety instead of building 4th generation economic ineptia because of absurdly high safety bloat. The answer to how to make nuclear reactors costs effective is simple: 1) Do not fire all competent and trained nuclear engineers 2) Make nuclear reactors maximally secure, not absurdly secure.
It's of course not particularly great. You can make hydrogen at like 80% efficiency and use it at like 60% efficiency in a combined cycle plant. So 50% is probably in the right ballpark. Batteries are much more efficient, but efficiency is only weakly correlated with cost. I don't know the actual numbers, but from what I've heard hydrogen (or even methane) are the most economically promising storage options when you need weeks or months worth of backup.
Then there is wind power and other sources such as geothermal energy and Bio-gas Plants, which is are independant of day time.
And let's not forget the lower energy demand at night, the possibilities for supply based energy consumption, (green) gas imports from somewhere else.
Depends on the factory. Most production processes are multi-stage. Most multi-stage processes have differing energy needs across individual unit operations. You could easily schedule low energy, slow processes (testing, drying, settling, cooling, etc.) to evenings to better match power availability. This has the secondary benefit that people prefer to sleep at night. Normally you'd have to redesign the whole factory to facilitate such a process change, however.
10000% Nuclear. France just announced a massive Nuclear project, meanwhile in the USA, the NRC bankrupts every project with non-stop delays instead of timely constructive work with designers, builders, and investors.
The nuclear announcement makes nice headlines for nationalistic dreams. What they actually do tells the real story.
> France will also increase its solar power capacity tenfold by 2050 to more than 100 gigawatts (GW) and target building 50 offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of at least 40 GW.
So they are adding ~10 GW nuclear (6 * 1.6 GW) and at least 140 GW of renewables. Use any capacity factor you want but the numbers speak for themselves.
The real reason for this is likely continue have an industrial base for their naval submarine reactors by subsidizing a complementary civilian industry.
> The real reason for this is likely continue have an industrial base for their naval submarine reactors by subsidizing a complementary civilian industry.
Interesting, I've never read about that angle. Nuclear is a great complement to Wind/Solar as it provides a steady base load.
The thing is, they don't complement each other at all. They both compete for the same share of the market: the cheapest most inflexible power generation. Renewables win there and force nuclear plants to be more flexible.
Due to the extremely high fixed costs and lower marginal costs of nuclear plants they then have to make the money back in fewer hours, driving cost even higher.
The other issue is the costly steam turbine side. The reason gas won over coal is the efficiency and tiny footprint of gas turbines. Tack on a tiny steam side for the last percent of efficiency and you have a CCGT plant. Coal and nuclear share the same steam side, both have been dead ends since the 80s.
That is not true. They do not compete for the some market segment.
The problem is most renewables fall off before peak load subsides. That's why cheap energy storage would be a huge boon for transient renewables as they could keep providing energy after the sun is down and the wind has subsided.
They do. This graph shows the nuclear "baseload" being crowded out of the market by cheaper renewables. (Or in this case mostly coal, but they are about equal on the electricity market in terms in inflexibility and cost structure.)
So, this means that nuclear is crowded out of the market during the sun hours, and later all windy hours. Take a low-ball nuclear cost of ~$130 per MWh. [1] Say that wind + solar can fulfill 12 hours per day, this is a low estimation. Current estimates is that ~80% is easily feasible without storage.
That means the nuclear plant has to make do with the 12 hours left. The nuclear plant has now, based on napkin math, entered a LCOE of $260 per MWh. It was already hilariously uncompetitive at $130 per MWh, now try $260. Now you can do power 2 gas and then burn it or any other extremely inefficient energy storage and still come out ahead.
> While historically large power grids used unvarying power plants to meet the base load, there is no specific technical requirement for this to be so. The base load can equally well be met by the appropriate quantity of intermittent power sources and dispatchable generation.
> Grid operators solicit bids to find the cheapest sources of electricity over short and long term buying periods.
> Nuclear and coal plants have very high fixed costs, high plant load factor but very low marginal costs, though not as low as solar, wind, and hydroelectric. On the other hand, peak load generators, such as natural gas, have low fixed costs, low plant load factor and high marginal costs.
> According to National Grid plc chief executive officer Steve Holliday and others, baseload is "outdated".
When did France announce a massive nuclear project? The last news I heard was that they plan to build a couple of new nuclear power plants, but far from the numbers they'd need to maintain the current capacity as ageing plants go offline in the coming years.
That really depends what "up to" means and how big the "fleet of smaller reactors" is going to be. Announcing up to 14 today is very little when you have over fifty reactors to replace in the next two or three decades when you consider that building a reactor takes around fifteen years. Nuclear energy hopes are pinned on those small reactors, but afaik, none of them are ready for prime time today.
While France is aiming to significantly reduce the number of nuclear power plants they operate, building any nuclear power plants is seen as a good sign by the industry.
Without natural resources Russia GDP would be lower than Polish. I think the whole reason for this war is the green transformation of the world. Military dictatorship played the wrong game and didn't mange to reform the country (it seems to be a case for all countries run by military).
This is Proxy war with US/Nato to get a trade deal in exchange for balancing China with military power (last card they've got). France and Germany were OK with this - cheap resources, you can move pouting factories to Siberia, production would be more competitive than Chinese.
> I think the whole reason for this war is the green transformation of the world.
I think you're on the right track but slightly off.
NG is "green" by EU standards and Russia does make it's money from NG sales to the EU. I think the piece you're missing is that Ukraine's current government is more friendly to the EU and Ukraine has massive, untapped NG reserves[1]. I have to think that the EU is eyeing Ukrainian NG in order to cut Russia out of it's economy.
North stream 2 has very little to do with this whole conflict. Because mining is quite expensive in Siberia, Russian gas may not be price competitive as soon as 2030. Renewable energy is getting cheaper. At some point, natural gas turbines will use hydrogen produced with nuclear and renewables to balance the peaks.
Sure, but they why kWh/h instead of kW? If you're inclined to measure the quantity of gas in terms of its energy, why not measure its flow in terms of power? (of course kWh/h _is_ power, but why denote it so strangely?)
This conveys the state of the mind, what's important. A more clear example is car mileage, which is expressed in l/(100 km), but can be shortened to area unit like mm² (and it even has a physical interpretation: https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/), but that's not what we need to know (how much mm² of petrol your car burns?).
Similarly, we don't need power of the transfer of the gas, we need to know how much gas gets exchanged, because it's priced per kWh, so removing h from each side actually makes things harder in another equation.
I'm surprised any gas was still flowing from Russia to the EU - it would seem like that would be the first thing they would have stopped in response to sanctions.
Most of it is still running because it's needed. Same goes for the exports to the US.
In fact there is pressure in Switzerland to block the trading of gas since 80% is done here but it would hurt the EU so there is no way this will be done unless the EU decides that they also want to sanction this.
The blocking of Swift also has an exclusion for trading of this gas.
Sorry, I may not have been clear: I don't know why Russia would not have halted the pipelines as retribution for the financial sanctions as it seems like one of the few resources they have that Europe needs. I'm sure there's an element of Russia needing those funds to fund its invasion, but it also seems like they could try to use oil supply restrictions to get the other sanctions lifted.
It seems to me that is only a card you want to play at the very end. There's also the possibility that when the tap closes the EU will adapt and then you've lost billions of revenue forever.
Looking at the data, I am wondering why the invasion is triggered now, as reserves are about to start being refilled, instead of earlier.
From the graph (https://agsi.gie.eu/#/graphs/DE) it seems like the storage starts being refilled as the weather warms near the end of march. IE Putin looses some bargaining power. What am I missing?
Putin’s and his inner circle’s plan was that it will take 1-4 days to take Kiev and two weeks to take most of Ukraine. Minimal resistance was expected. The window of opportunity with this expectation is from mid-December until end of February. They picked a date with this plan.
They dont want kiev. That is too big and too hard to defend. They want the east and that is what they will ask during negotiations. Only in netflix war lasts four days. America needed 18 days to do some stuff in iraq
Putin just had the same ask since 2014 . He doesnt want nato weapons near his country. He will create a tampon zone using the east of ukraine. Just as a reminder think about what americans did to escape the cuba missiles
> Putin’s and his inner circle’s plan was that it will take 1-4 days to take Kiev and two weeks to take most of Ukraine.
This is being said a lot these days, but I haven't seen any proof of it. I'm not saying that proofs don't exist nor that it's wrong, just that I've been reading it everywhere, and haven't seen evidence. So I'd be happy if someone reading this could point out to some clues
To give an example where the expectations come from, note that when Russia annexed Crimea, they could retain some but not all, of the officers.
Now when the Russian forces march in, they have common relatives that live in Ukraine, and some defect. The expectation of a ‘common big brother’ from Russia coming in and taking over government has been consistently shared by Russian officials. It is through the resistance of the invasion that desire for independence is shown.
No, I think it was kind of a joke to call it Pravda. The guy who started it ended up being decapitated and buried, likely by the government, for uncovering corruption.
Copied from another post: The view explicitly expressed by Russian planners in multiple sources signified that this is their expectation. Public announcements that Kiev will be taken in two weeks by Putin is the best source. Claims for the commonality of the three nations (Belorussian, Ukrainian and Russian) is what would cause this expectation. I am not saying it is rational to expect Kiev ti fall to several days. But I have to admit, Following the situation myself, I have had expected myself Ukraine to fold. I follow Easter European news closely, and I express personal analysis too.
Plus China said no war during the Olympics.
Plus COVID for 2 years.....
Plus the russian asset known as the Orange Moneky lost the ellections in the US.
The view explicitly expressed by Russian planners in multiple sources signified that this is their expectation. Public announcements that Kiev will be taken in two weeks by Putin is the best source. Claims for the commonality of the three nations (Belorussian, Ukrainian and Russian) is what would cause this expectation. I am not saying it is rational to expect Kiev ti fall to several days. But I have to admit, Following the situation myself, I have had expected myself Ukraine to fold.
I follow Easter European news closely.
I don't understand this comment. A quick look up of the `Morgenthau plan` seems to indicate it was focussed on removing Germany's military power by crushing their industrial output and various other economic restrictions.
Russia cutting off oil doesn't seem to be synonymous with the intent of Morgenthau, it may have a similar side-effect but it's not the same as far as I can see.
I'm not sure about this...with Russian gas gone wouldn't Germany pay a lot more for energy? I think the best solution is to build nuclear power plants but that is more about long term.
I agree it is a good thing - but it happened too early to be painless to Europeans. Or, to put it in other words, we should have been prepared for it a long time ago.
That's been my argument to friends and family this week. If an extra dollar per gallon is what it takes for fewer Ukrainian children to die then that's what it takes.
We all had the extra dollars and did spend them in places where these abuses were not happening when we had a robust economy that was not just centered on knowlage and service work.
When you can get cheap goods from somewhere, then you can buy more. We outsourced and promoted cheap products for the benifit of Wallstreet and busniess at the expense of our future wages and global human rights.
There will be no blackout due to gas issues. Power generation from gas is not a problem. Heat generation from gas could become one though. Luckily Germany will likely mandate a switch to electricity driven heatpumps for all buildings soon.
Not even that. I am a German myself, and I can tell our heating habbits are on a luxurious level. It is very common in Germany to heat the full house/appartment 24/7 to a comfy level just so you can walk around in light/comfy closes. It is common to not wear thick closes at home and especially not in bed etc. Gas is also used for the water boiler, and it is considered "standard" to shower every day.
Now, if I go back to the generation of my grandparents and to some extend even my parents when they were in their childhood, that was unheard of. You would only heat the main living room during cold winters, and the family would gather. For sleeping you wore pyjamas plus socks etc, and you took a tin with hot potatoes to bed. Showering was not a thing, you would wash daily and maybe bathing on Sundays.
Now that annoys me a little about the whole "Germany needs gas from Russia urgently!" narrative. If you cut out gas for heating/boiling (not electricity), not a single german will die this winter, or next winter. We will lose a lot of comfort, and might have to change our habbits, but we do not have siberian grade winters where having no heating means having to freeze to death.
Oh it's not just Germany. In the Bay Area, California, US, (where you could easily go without any heating or cooling year round like myself) every 10 posts on Nextdoor during the winter is:
"Why is my gas bill $500? This is outrageous. I have 2,400 sq ft. (232 sq. m.) house and keep it at 70F (21C) at all times, so what?"
