Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#91

Post by gjsman-1000 » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

protontorpedo wrote: post #84

Loic wrote: post #53

My personal opinion: All this Ukraine stuff is also supported by China. I bet they are ready to buy Russian oil and gas to compensate even if this costs them more than getting them from the open market. Why? Because this is a wonderful test drive to check how the West (sorry for the approximation) is reacting to a country theoretically supported by the West being invaded by another one. For me, the next one on the li…

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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#92

Post by _ph_ » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

bungle wrote: post #78

_ph_ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are not a real replacement to gas. First of all, a lot of gas gets used for heating - nuclear isn't useful there. Then it is used for providing flexible power, to ramp up and down as quickly as possible to follow the production of renewables. Only a small fraction of the gas goes into "base load" usage. So the government might look into the nuclear power plants to dampen the price level for electricity…

> First of all, a lot of gas gets used for heating - nuclear isn't useful there All electricity basically turns to heat at some point. So why not?

Yes, of course you can heat with electricity - and using heat pumps this is definitely the future. However, the amount of nuclear available would make only a small difference here. It should be much easier to just buy gas internationally and push forward with renewables.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#93

Post by piokoch » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

Loic wrote: post #53

My personal opinion: All this Ukraine stuff is also supported by China. I bet they are ready to buy Russian oil and gas to compensate even if this costs them more than getting them from the open market. Why? Because this is a wonderful test drive to check how the West (sorry for the approximation) is reacting to a country theoretically supported by the West being invaded by another one. For me, the next one on the li…

China is not stupid to become depended on Russian gas or oil supply. The deal they signed with Russia is for 38 billion cubic meters of gas sent through "Power of Siberia" gas pipe (for comparison, in 2006 Poland purchase from Russia 206 billion cubic meters) and this throughput will be reached in 2025.

Russia has no practical way to transfer gas designated for Europe to China, there is no pipe they can use as gas comes from different sources.

But yes, China is looking how Europe, USA, NATO is handling the situation as this will give some hints if "the West" is still capable to defend Taiwan, Philippines, Japan...

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#94

Post by fsh » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

bungle wrote: post #78

_ph_ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are not a real replacement to gas. First of all, a lot of gas gets used for heating - nuclear isn't useful there. Then it is used for providing flexible power, to ramp up and down as quickly as possible to follow the production of renewables. Only a small fraction of the gas goes into "base load" usage. So the government might look into the nuclear power plants to dampen the price level for electricity…

> First of all, a lot of gas gets used for heating - nuclear isn't useful there All electricity basically turns to heat at some point. So why not?

You lose something like 70% of the thermal output of the reactor in the conversion to electricity. Also the capacities a nowhere near large enough. Nord Stream 2 alone can transport something like 63 GW worth of gas. This is more than the total electricity consumption of Germany.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#95

Post by tialaramex » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

tiku wrote: post #12

Thanks Germans. Paying our gas bill will be fun here in the Netherlands.

If it is the fault of the Germans, then it is more so the fault of the Russians, but honestly if the Netherlands doesn't have natural gas, why be shocked when other people raise prices for a substance you can't do without and must buy at any price?

At least the Scottish have the argument that all things being equal they don't need Russian gas, so the only reason their prices are high is that if you've got a bunch of gas in Scotland, you should sell it all for $$$ to the Netherlands unless the price in Scotland rises too.

How is the Netherlands on Electricity? Are you like Scotland on that too, where despite notionally making most of your electricity without needing gas, the market clearing price is determined by gas generators and so it soars because gas prices are high?

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#96

Post by dustinmoris » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

Am I the only one who thinks that the reality of this crisis is a lot more nuanced than what Western media shows us?

Same as with Taiwan. It's an island off China and rebels flew there at some point and started to govern Taiwan as if it was theirs. China always insisted that Taiwan is part of China but because they never used military force to put an end to the game which those rebels played on that island it became harder for China to maintain the premise that Taiwan is in fact still part of China. Obviously the West has HUGE incentives to keep Taiwan seperate from China so will only portray one side of the story and the longer China was doing the objectively speaking right thing (not using force to exercise their right) the easier it is for the West to peddle the idea that Taiwan is in fact not part of China. It's almost like the West has been intelligently exploiting the good will of the East and I do feel like there is a lot of that going on between Ukraine and Russia as well.

Unfortunately there are no objective sources of news anymore and it's hard to really get a well balanced overview of the crisis. When I read on Wikipedia that for instance more than half of the Ukraine was not in favour of the Euromaiden protests, or other minor facts which shine a slightly different light on everything I am curious how much did the West contribute in stirring the crisis like we know they did in other countries in the world (Cuba, Middle East, Arab Spring, etc.)

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#97

Post by scotty79 » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

fileeditview wrote: post #65

scotty79 wrote: post #48

That's dumb. What they should do instead is tax the gas that will flow through North Stream 2 to be as expensive as the one going through other routes and transfer this tax directly to Ukraine budget as aid let's say for the next 30 years, irrevocably. And possibly partially to Poland because it has very similar concerns but to a lesser degree than Ukraine.

Why then build the pipeline in the first place?

Germany didn't bulit it. It was build by Russia through Gazprom in collaboration with few German companies, that care about their profits not Russian tanks in Ukraine.

There's nothing wrong making this enterprise to be on par with other routes.

German corporations that collaborated gambled on getting unfair business advantage through geopolitics. They should loose. It doesn't matter they had political support of Germany initially. Political reality changed to the point German support of Russia can no longer be swept under a rug.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#98

Post by FartyMcFarter » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

Loic wrote: post #53

My personal opinion: All this Ukraine stuff is also supported by China. I bet they are ready to buy Russian oil and gas to compensate even if this costs them more than getting them from the open market. Why? Because this is a wonderful test drive to check how the West (sorry for the approximation) is reacting to a country theoretically supported by the West being invaded by another one. For me, the next one on the li…

> All this Ukraine stuff is also supported by China.

It is probably not a coincidence that the big move yesterday happened just after the Beijing Winter Olympics ended.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#99

Post by dboreham » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

bungle wrote: post #78

_ph_ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are not a real replacement to gas. First of all, a lot of gas gets used for heating - nuclear isn't useful there. Then it is used for providing flexible power, to ramp up and down as quickly as possible to follow the production of renewables. Only a small fraction of the gas goes into "base load" usage. So the government might look into the nuclear power plants to dampen the price level for electricity…

> First of all, a lot of gas gets used for heating - nuclear isn't useful there All electricity basically turns to heat at some point. So why not?

You can't use electricity to run your gas furnace.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#100

Post by oefrha » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #98

Loic wrote: post #53

My personal opinion: All this Ukraine stuff is also supported by China. I bet they are ready to buy Russian oil and gas to compensate even if this costs them more than getting them from the open market. Why? Because this is a wonderful test drive to check how the West (sorry for the approximation) is reacting to a country theoretically supported by the West being invaded by another one. For me, the next one on the li…

> All this Ukraine stuff is also supported by China. It is probably not a coincidence that the big move yesterday happened just after the Beijing Winter Olympics ended.

Olympic Truce, duh.