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European natural gas imports and storage reserves

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Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#171

Post by stoltzmann »

js8 wrote: post #151
stoltzmann wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster you've replied to said >NATO does not need nuclear deterrence again Russia's conventional weapons NATO has more than enough capabilities to destroy Russia's conventional weaponry, but as Russia has nuclear weapons, NATO must also have them to keep parity. Getting rid of nuclear weapons is impossible. Genie's out of the bottle.

> Getting rid of nuclear weapons is impossible. I disagree. Progress is being made (see ICANW), despite setbacks, some unfortunately coming from "the West", which is supposed to be morally more advanced. And NATO doesn't need to keep parity with Russia, what for? I also consider nuclear retaliation strike to be morally dubious. What's the point?

NATO does have to at least keep parity with Russia. Russia is the number one threat in the region, and NATO was made specifically for this purpose. Without adequate weapons to ensure peace, there would be no point of the alliance.

Nuclear weapons are necessary as a deterrent. In this case from an adversary that has nuclear weapons - without those in stock NATO would be outmatched and vulnerable to being subject to the threat of using them.

At the end of the day, states with nuclear weapons get to push non-nuclear states around. Good luck getting Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan or North Korea to disarm.

Getting the West to abandon their nuclear weapons would be morally reprehensible as those states would become subjects to the states that did not.

It's a nice dream, but:

1. It won't happen.

2. Nuclear weapons I believe are the most important reason why we did not have a conventional war in Europe for 80 years. Russia would not attack an adversary that was nuclear armed or in a nuclear sharing program.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#172

Post by dnh44 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #98
dnh44 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NATO Bucharest Declaration of 2008 mentioned Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO.

Again, Ukraine was nowhere near to joining NATO in 2008, 2014 or 2022.

I never said it was close. You seemed to put the demarcation date for the discussion of it joining at 2014 but it started before that. I simply wanted to add more information to the discussion.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#173

Post by danhor »

Mewit wrote: post #167

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 dange…

The part about germany is obviously not true. If you look at the electricity generation via gas, the share has not grown meaningfully since 2005.

The state has not started large campaigns in other areas compared to electricity to phase out other fuels.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#175

Post by lostapathy »

js8 wrote: post #151
stoltzmann wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster you've replied to said >NATO does not need nuclear deterrence again Russia's conventional weapons NATO has more than enough capabilities to destroy Russia's conventional weaponry, but as Russia has nuclear weapons, NATO must also have them to keep parity. Getting rid of nuclear weapons is impossible. Genie's out of the bottle.

> Getting rid of nuclear weapons is impossible. I disagree. Progress is being made (see ICANW), despite setbacks, some unfortunately coming from "the West", which is supposed to be morally more advanced. And NATO doesn't need to keep parity with Russia, what for? I also consider nuclear retaliation strike to be morally dubious. What's the point?

> I also consider nuclear retaliation strike to be morally dubious. What's the point?

The point isn't that you win something with a second strike. The point is that second strike capability ensures no actor can make a first strike without risking consequence. It's about deterrent, not about winning.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#176

Post by Maakuth »

blub wrote: post #73
bhaak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What diplomatic off ramp does Russia need? There is a simple first step towards redemption and that is get out of Ukraine right now. Better yesterday. Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. Eastern Europe tried to hammer that point into the brains of the other European politicians but it didn't work until now.

There is no redemption for Russia, this is by now probably etched into their brains after Yugoslavia, two NATO expansions, Georgia and Ukraine. The sanctions are also here to stay, so claiming that “getting out of Ukraine now” would make any sense or bring them any benefits is wishful thinking. As far as lessons go, Europe didn’t really learn anything or drew the wrong conclusions based on their approach to China. In…

Pray tell, when did Georgia and Ukraine join NATO?

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#177

Post by postsantum »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #161
nikolay wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conf…

>Ukraine hasn't been buying Russian gas for about 5 years now

Yeah, they buy hungarian gas that just happens to flow from Russia. This is called "virtual reverse"

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

I heard Russia is willing to give up some of that in exchange for some rubles

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#178

Post by wbsss4412 »

anticodon wrote: post #170
wbsss4412 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

I don’t doubt that there was western involvement, just as there was certainly Russian involvement supporting prior administrations. While it can be difficult to discern the true desires of Ukrainians given outside involvement, its very easy to say that the current government in Ukraine is much more democratic than plenty of US Allies in other parts of the world, eg the Middle East.

> 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.

If this is so easy to find, why not provide actual sources?

Edit: the irony here is the extremely close parallels between this war and hitter’s annexation of the sudentenland.

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

I can tell from his actions. Russia has been invading its neighbors the entire time he’s been in power.

Did I go a bit overboard when I said “complete fealty”? Sure. But it’s quite obvious that Putin won’t accept those states as anything less than Russian client states within its sphere of influence.

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

US does bad things so other countries should do bad things too.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#179

Post by bpodgursky »

phh wrote: post #116
The_Colonel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) in the short term Europe is not cutting gas from Russia, it's the other way round 2) in the long term, Europe is trying to get independent from Russian gas so that 1) will not happen again Europe is trying to get away from being dependent from Russian gas for strategic, not humanistic reasons.

That being said, I hope we plan on no longer depending on Qatar either, because their stability doesn't seem a given either.

Once you're relying on LNG terminals rather than fixed pipes, you have a lot of source flexibility.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#180

Post by MichaelCollins »

gdy wrote: post #153
The_Colonel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly every country in Europe has been invading its neighbors for centuries We don't need to go into that long history. Most of these CEE countries have been invaded by Russia in the last 100 years. > It’s not unexpected that the former Warsaw Pact countries would want to join. It is surprising to see the US being so short-sighted to allow these expansions considering that several of its own diplomats and foreign…

"Not letting e.g. Baltics into NATO/EU would almost certainly mean they have been already absorbed back into Russia. The rest of CEE would be vassalized." Why?

Because Russia has a recent and current track record of behaving this way.
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