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Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

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Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#321

Post by oytis »

parasense wrote: post #320
mechanical_bear wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is my grandmother going to have a house after EU lets a Russian tank drive over it?

The EU is dependent on RU energy exports. It's that simple. Noble principles do not heat homes, or feed the hungry. You are free to construct a dichotomy of tanks rumbling over homes, or homes being deprived of heating during hard winter.... but you will only succeed in illustrating the Nash Equilibrium, and fail to be persuasive otherwise. Try to look at the big picture.

Europe being dependent on Russia for energy is not a cosmological constant, but a result of multiple political decisions done over decades that are being _slowly_ reconsidered now (nobody is closing the first Nord Stream yet for one)

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#322

Post by vorpalhex »

DaedPsyker wrote: post #310
vorpalhex wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has had it's billionaires sanctioned back in 14/15. Most of them now use the Russian banks to do their business (and those banks are not subject to sanctions and will misrepresent who they are doing business for). The next step is to close the loophole and target the Russian banks as a whole, which will have consequences for non-billionaores in Russia too.

It seems that banks are the new target for the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60476137 London is one of the key centers for global banking. That said, I can't imagine Russian billionaires don't have means to shelter funds, nested shells in some offshore bank I'd imagine.

Agreed, they will continue to find ways to circumvent the sanctions but hopefully we can make it more and more painful to do so.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#323

Post by ed_balls »

ttyyzz wrote: post #286
meinersbur wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Germany was truly meaning business, they'd stop Nord Stream 1 If Germany is meaning business, they'd stop buying any gas from Russia. Why would the means how it gets to Germany even matter?

How am I going to heat my house?

heat pump and solar. cheaper and less risky.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#324

Post by ghostwriter »

busterarm wrote: post #306
karpierz wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think NATO particularly wanted to include Ukraine, but they definitely don't want Russia to be able to dictate who is allowed to be included. Russia is aware of this, which is why in order to set the grounds for an invasion of Ukraine, they repeatedly asked NATO "please swear that you'll never let Ukraine into NATO" with the added non-starter of "remove troops from existing NATO countries". And when NATO righ…

The EU still has to consider how other nations will react to their policies. Russia and China are still in the 50-100 years ago mentality and will ruthlessly enforce having buffer states between major powers. Sharing a border is simply not in their interests and they would rather destroy Ukraine than allow it to join the EU. The US would do the same thing. Just think about how much we freaked out over the Cuban Missi…

> Russia and China are still in the 50-100 years ago mentality and will ruthlessly enforce having buffer states between major powers.

And having "50-100 year ago mentality" doesn't mean "unintelligent" either, it means "no bs wokeness" and "meticulously calculating", which is a crucially important skill in modern day global politics, perhaps even more important than 50 years ago.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#325

Post by another_why »

vorpalhex wrote: post #260
another_why wrote: post #171

If there were real plans to sanction people responsible for invasion, they should've sanctioned russian billionaires - cancel their residence, close their companies, liquidate their property, freeze their money in banks, forbid travel. But this looks like they are taking EU money to pay to US gas fracking companies

Russia has had it's billionaires sanctioned back in 14/15. Most of them now use the Russian banks to do their business (and those banks are not subject to sanctions and will misrepresent who they are doing business for). The next step is to close the loophole and target the Russian banks as a whole, which will have consequences for non-billionaores in Russia too.

If you believe in a fairy tale that no one knows whose money going where, in 2022, then yes, sounds very reasonable. Scary Russian billionaires fool poor Europeans by acting through banks, aha. Are you trying to find an excuse for EU and US to NOT take any means to do what they threaten to do? This is bullshit.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#326

Post by qsdf38100 »

_ph_ wrote: post #58
zx85wes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been dead for a very long time. It's a carrot that Russia was never going to get. If Scholz is smart (which I doubt) he'll restart/keep open the nuclear power plants and cut taxes on gas/electricity for households to neutralise the price hikes.

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…

Heat pumps are a thing. Also the problem with wind and pv is insufficient storage. We need additional storage more than additional wind/pv.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#327

Post by mercutio2 »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #293
ttyyzz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How am I going to heat my house?

Don't know why you got downvoted. All these Americans in this thread can have all the opinions they want. They're not getting screwed by high gas prices right now.

Gas prices are extremely high for Americans this year, also.

But it’s true that Russia isn’t a driving force in that.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#328

Post by another_why »

phkahler wrote: post #232
another_why wrote: post #171

If there were real plans to sanction people responsible for invasion, they should've sanctioned russian billionaires - cancel their residence, close their companies, liquidate their property, freeze their money in banks, forbid travel. But this looks like they are taking EU money to pay to US gas fracking companies

Did you ever notice that in Chess (a game of kings) you never actually capture the opposing king, you just back him into a corner and call the game over. All other pieces on the board are actually captured and removed.

Did you ever notice that it's not chess?

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#329

Post by yorwba »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #300
yorwba wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yakutia is relatively close to China, but most Russian gas exported to Europe comes from Western Siberia, which is farther away from China.

It doesn't matter. From https://lngprime.com/asia/chinas-zhejiang-energy-to-buy-stak... > The firm said it expects Yatek’s gas reserves to rise to 567 billion cubic meters in the third quarter of 2022.

Russia had 48 938 billion cubic meters of proven gas reserves in 2020 ( https://asb.opec.org/data/ASB_Data.php Table 9.1: World proven natural gas reserves by country)

Those 567 billion cubic meters might be a big deal for Yatek, but they're a drop in the bucket for the country as a whole.

Re: Germany shelves Nord Stream 2 pipeline

#330

Post by another_why »

vorpalhex wrote: post #322
DaedPsyker wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that banks are the new target for the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60476137 London is one of the key centers for global banking. That said, I can't imagine Russian billionaires don't have means to shelter funds, nested shells in some offshore bank I'd imagine.

Agreed, they will continue to find ways to circumvent the sanctions but hopefully we can make it more and more painful to do so.

No one is searching for the "ways", it's agreed on. "You can't do this anymore, because we need to win on the next elections, but we won't look here and here, see you in 2 years"
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