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Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

reuters.com

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Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#31

Post by Gwypaas »

haughty wrote: post #29

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 so…

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#32

Post by treis »

skadamat wrote: post #12

I never knew until recently how tied up Russia's oil strategy was to their military / political thinking. If others are interested, this video has a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

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.

Map:

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/europe-map/

It's a bit misleading since it doesn't show Nordstream 1 which runs under the Baltic sea to Germany.

EDIT: Here's a better map. The above is outdated

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Major_ru...

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#33

Post by adrianN »

berto4 wrote: post #17
jotm wrote: post #13

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…

can solar run 24/7 factories?? it's not that simple guys

With the help of electrolysis and a gas turbine, it can. The problem is that we don't have enough solar panels and not enough electrolyzers.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#34

Post by kitkat_new »

berto4 wrote: post #17
jotm wrote: post #13

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…

can solar run 24/7 factories?? it's not that simple guys

yes, batteries, power to gas, ...

There are many possiblities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage

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.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#35

Post by adrianN »

exabrial wrote: post #23
jotm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, batteries of any kind... Nuclear would be better, but that takes time to build.

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.

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.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#36

Post by mschaef »

exabrial wrote: post #26
bluejekyll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> 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 (> 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.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#37

Post by phkahler »

tartoran wrote: post #15
skadamat wrote: post #12

I never knew until recently how tied up Russia's oil strategy was to their military / political thinking. If others are interested, this video has a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

Gas and oil is all they have to trade and they have a lot of it.

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.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#38

Post by pftburger »

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?

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#39

Post by gwbas1c »

jotm wrote: post #13

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…

I suspect that oil will be brought in from other sources; and gas turbines will be retrofitted to run on oil.

I live near a turbine that runs on gas in the summer, and oil in the winter when demand for gas is high.

I also suspect that prices will rise, encouraging people to turn their thermostats down and limit travel.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#40

Post by jcranmer »

haughty wrote: post #29

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 so…

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).

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