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European natural gas imports and storage reserves

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Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#161

Post by kspacewalk2 »

nikolay wrote: post #122
iSnow wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's wrong with stop-gap measures to prevent an energy crisis?

As we can see, sanctions and arm-twisting are not stopping the war, not weakening Russia. Not even politically given the recent elections in Russia! Even Ukraine keeps buying Russian gas and I can't recall any comment from otherwise very vocal Zenesky about it! If there are supply issues, is due to all the nonsense coming from EU, which only hurts it, not Russia. Even if EU deversifies from Russia, it will be at a de…

- Sanctions are most definitely weakening Russia, by demolishing its economy in the medium- and long-term.

- Russia has no elections since it's a near-totalitarian autocracy with usurpers firmly in charge by force.

- Ukraine hasn't been buying Russian gas for about 5 years now. Russian gas is transited via Ukraine, even during the war, since it's a rare situation that's in the best interest of all parties to the conflict, but 0 gas is purchased by Ukraine from Russia.

- Supply issues are due to a war of aggression and attempts to deprive the aggressor of a major revenue source (which no one claimed will stop the war immediately, it's a long-term/punitive move).

- EU has no choice but to diversify from Russia, since the only alternative is neutering of the EU and vassalage in all foreign policy matters that Putin chooses. (A significant percentage of the people expressing concern about supply issues and advocating a reversal are in fact concern-trolling and probably want this to happen. Are you one of those?)

Russia uses energy as a weapon, so it must be deprived of this weapon.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#162

Post by mythrwy »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #96
Bayart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it ? What's the data point, beyond Hitler ? Because History has shown repeatedly and consistently that escalation is reckless and extremely costly.

Native Americans appeased the US till there was nothing left. You don't tend to see many appeasers around because there is nothing left of them.

Yep and the ones that did appease are still around. The others not so much.

This parable works multiple ways.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#163

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

yabqk wrote: post #150
i_no_can_eat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very ridiculous thing to say.

It’s hyperbolic, but yes, Ukraine is much more similar to Russia than to Western Europe.

Russia is much more European than Yemen. So is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia.

Moscow and, especially, St. Petersburg are pretty European historically and culturally. Western Russia accounts for 77% of Russia's population and is predominately influenced by the culture of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv...

Europe isn't just Italy, Spain, & France...

Not every European country is Western European culturally...

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#164

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

chitowneats wrote: post #157
yabqk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hyperbolic, but yes, Ukraine is much more similar to Russia than to Western Europe.

Russia and Ukraine are historically and culturally European. Russian expansion deep into Siberia is a relatively recent phenomenon. Sure, they're not Western European, but that's not what you said in your original comment.

Moscow and St. Petersburg - which make up a huge chunk of Russia economically, politically, and in terms of population - are very European historically and culturally.

But Russia is a gigantic country with a lot of population that isn't particularly European in any sense.

Ukraine on the other hand is basically 100% European any way you want to slice it beside Putin's revisionist history.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#165

Post by MichaelCollins »

yabqk wrote: post #137
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works both ways you know. Europe cannot afford to lose face either. Imagine EU can be blackmailed by Russia! Wouldn't stand a chance against the US or China. The EU clearly believes they can win this fight so why should it withdraw support to Ukraine?

The EU doesn’t stand a chance against the US: look how they forced us to wage a proxy war against Russia. And now we’re going to buy liquefied gas from them.

> The EU doesn’t stand a chance against the US: look how they forced us to wage a proxy war against Russia.

America forced the EU into a proxy war with Russia... by having Russia invade Ukraine? Sounds like somebody has been huffing Russian propaganda.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#166

Post by MichaelCollins »

iSnow wrote: post #48
Bayart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it ? What's the data point, beyond Hitler ? Because History has shown repeatedly and consistently that escalation is reckless and extremely costly.

>What's the data point, beyond Hitler ? Ukraine 2014. The West should have stopped Russia back then and there.

In the time since 2014, Ukraine got stronger while Russia got weaker. Had Russia pressed forward with their invasion in 2014, they might have succeeded in taking the whole country before NATO-aligned countries worked up the willpower to do anything about it. But because Russia stalled then, the cancer of corruption and hardware decay ate away at their power, while Ukraine began preparing for the inevitable.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#167

Post by Mewit »

Looks better than I thought! But of course they'll burn through that storage fast if it's a cold winter. The import graphs give me hope that they might be able to mostly plug the gap with LNG and maybe Algeria. Of course for LNG they're competing with Asia, so even if they are able to avoid physically running out of gas, it's probably going to get very expensive.

I think what this has really demonstrated is the danger of always taking the easy solution on energy generation. Germany seems like the best example. They decided they wanted to phase out coal. Fair enough, it's by far the dirtiest hydrocarbon. Then they also decide they don't want to use nuclear power. And they don't want to frac for gas. And they don't want to invest much in LNG terminals because ultimately they don't want to burn gas either. But renewables aren't anywhere near big enough to close the circle right now, so basically by saying no to everything else, they by default grew their dependence on Russian gas.

There are no perfect sources of energy (at least not yet), so countries have to make tough choices. Hopefully that is clearer to decision makers in Germany and elsewhere now; making the easy, uncontroversial choice every time can lead you into a big jam.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#168

Post by chasd00 »

1ris wrote: post #8
roenxi wrote: post #6

Economies, when left alone, are about as resilient as cockroaches and much more brutal about securing themselves. The situation is a serious blow to the pride of the European politicians who look like they've been mishandling energy policy for years (where are the nuclear reactors?). But realistically they'll probably survive in practice. It'll be painful. The issue is that somehow the West has taken Iraq 2.0 and is…

>where are the nuclear reactors? In France. Mostly idling.

>> where are the nuclear reactors?

> In France. Mostly idling.

Isn't the problem natural gas and not electricity? If there was a reactor on every corner wouldn't Germany and the other countries still be in the same boat? They can't convert all that natural gas infrastructure over to electricity in a couple months..

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#169

Post by pydry »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #143
blub wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik the NATO mission in Yugoslavia and Libya were the two big ones. Both misused NATO and were not defensive in nature.

And none of them were targeted against Russia. For the obvious reason that NATO countries are largely rich, peaceful, and doing pretty ok and are not gonna waste their time and energy attacking a nation with f'ing nuclear weapons.

Oh it was. If you thought it was coincidence that they were both Russian allies you'd be utterly wrong.

You're right that NATO definitely isnt interested in committing to a full scale ground invasion of Russia.

Similarly the British were never interested in committing to a full scale invasion of India. Therefore they were... never a threat?

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#170

Post by anticodon »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #124
tablespoon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? One that saves face, to at least some degree. > There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday. Simple for you, because you're not the one losing face For example, here's another "simple first step" for Europe "towards redemption" (in the eyes of the Russians): withdraw all military and financial support for Ukrai…

Your analysis is seemingly based in the notion that all viewpoints are equal valid, but an analysis of the war needs to be rooted in what’s right and what’s wrong. Russia is fighting a war of aggression in Ukraine. Do they have interests there? Sure, but that doesn’t give them the right to invade and topple the government. Before you ask, yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong. T…

> yes the US is extremely guilty of this exact same behavior, it is also wrong.

Has US ever suffered sanctions for that? I don't remember any.

> This war started because Putin won’t accept anything less then complete fealty from the leaders of Ukraine/Belarus

How do you know this? Did Putin said this personally to you? Announced this in the media?

You attribute to him something that western propaganda fakes like it's some irrefutable absolute and complete truth.

BTW, do you remember that before it all started, Russia explicitly asked for guarantees that NATO won't expand further towards Russian borders and that request blatantly refused by the West.

Also, your media probably do not say that Ukrainian politicians repeatedly announced plans to exterminate Russian population of Ukraine. Physically kill all the Russians just as Hitler (he's considered a hero in Ukraine) wanted. You'd probably never find this in English or any other language spoken on the West, but there is plenty of evidence in Russian/Ukrainian even though a lot of it being scrubbed in the last 200 days. Still you can find a lot of those on YouTube for example, if you can understand Russian/Ukrainian.

You'll never be able to get a complete picture of what was and what is happening here because you can read and understand only what is fed to you by your media and this information is heavily biased to put it politely.

> the 2014 revolution that threw out Yanikovich

It wasn't a revolution - it was a coup funded and organized by the EU and USA.

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