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European natural gas imports and storage reserves

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Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#211

Post by dependsontheq »

lumost wrote: post #195
cycomanic wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German situation was even worse then you describe. They decided to move out of coal and nuclear, but at the same time made windpower significantly more difficult and reduced investment into solar. If you look at the installed windturbines ( https://www.wind-energie.de/english/statistics/statistics-ge... ) you can see an initial boom around 2000 and a large reduction after 2004 similarly things picked up again in…

This really begs the question on whether there was some outside influence on german energy decisions. It's not a given that Russia hasn't been using non-standard negotiation methods for making Germany more dependent on Russian gas by drumming up fear on everything else.

There actually seems to be an investigation into leadership of the energy department of the relevant department. Nothing is proven but some things raised suspicions.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#212

Post by KptMarchewa »

js8 wrote: post #118
KptMarchewa wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scenario with China is the same as Soviet Union in 20-30s, 60-70s and Russia in 00s-now, just not fully resolved yet. You prop up hard authoritarian or totalitarian government with trade. They get strong, and instead of "democratizing" they take a hard line and endanger democracies. Europe also had economic MAD with Russia, yet they did not care. Now they flare gas and destroy Ukrainian cities. https://en.wikiped…

I think Russia actually does care - Putin recently said that closing the natural gas supply was in retaliation to EU's economic sanctions. Are you suggesting the West should deliberately keep countries poorer, in the fear of them becoming (more) authoritarian? I think that would be wrong (and also counterproductive) thing to do.

>keep countries poorer

Keep hard authoritarian and totalitarian countries poorer. That's done with multiple countries right now, like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela.

Keep weak authoritarian (on a road to democracy) and democratic nations richer. EU and NATO expansion have been historic successes, with democracy extending farther than ever in the 90s and 00s. Moreover, US policy on India has been largest geopolitical tragedy of XX century. The largest democracy in the world is relatively hostile to "the west", despite being threatened by China.

Opposite policies - keep enemies close - drastically failed in case of Russia and China, with both countries being especially bloodthirsty right now.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#213

Post by KptMarchewa »

js8 wrote: post #198
benj111 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Ukraine? Should they refrain from defending themselves? Lest it cause blood shed? I really don't get your POV Putin has repeatedly shown they he will invade other countries. If we don't stop him at Ukraine then next it may well be a nato member and then how much blood shed will there be? Your suggested course just rewards aggression. Sometimes you need to stand up to bullies. Putin is a bully.

I think Ukrainians have the right to do it, and it's not my call to make, it's up to them. I am torn on it, emotionally I understand it, but I think rationally it's possibly a wrong choice (as I explained elsewhere in the discussion). Chomsky made a nice comparison with Palestine. Do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against Israeli apartheid by shooting rockets at them from Gaza strip? Regarding my PO…

>Chomsky made a nice comparison with Palestine. Do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against Israeli apartheid by shooting rockets at them from Gaza strip?

How does that defend Palestine in any way? It's a stupid revenge targeting civilians. If you're so helpless you can't act against military or targeted collaborators then don't do anything at all.

I would be the first to suggest to drop support to Ukraine, and even support acting against it, if they started to deliberately target Russian civilians - Belgorod is very close. Even more, they could produce large amount of chemical and even nuclear weapons if they chose, yet they don't do it.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#214

Post by plushpuffin »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #145
iSnow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has no say over Eastern Europ and ex-USSR countries. If they want to join NATO, there is nothing Russia can do. Justifying a war based on this is just very wrong.

Yeah, but the Americans pinky swore that they wouldn't expand NATO in the early 90s in an early negotiating round. That's how negotiations work. Everything the west proposes at any point of negotiations must be honored irrespective of whether it was actually an agreed upon outcome of that negotiation or not. And if Russia blatantly breaks the agreed upon, written, formally accepted points of the negotiation that does…

edit: Oh, I think I may have misread what you wrote. You were being sarcastic and saying that the US proposed not to expand early on but no agreement was reached, and Russia is trying to hold NATO to that anyway. Sorry!

Could you provide any proof of this? I don't see any evidence of this, are you referring to a verbal agreement?

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_111767.htm#c203

Claim: NATO promised Russia it would not expand after the Cold War

Fact: Such an agreement was never made. NATO’s door has been open to new members since it was founded in 1949 – and that has never changed. This “Open Door Policy” is enshrined in Article 10 of NATO’s founding treaty, which says “any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic” can apply for membership. Decisions on membership are taken by consensus among all Allies. No treaty signed by the United States, Europe and Russia included provisions on NATO membership.

The idea of NATO expansion beyond a united Germany was not on the agenda in 1989, particularly as the Warsaw Pact still existed. This was confirmed by Mikhail Gorbachev in an interview in 2014: "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up, either."

Declassified White House transcripts also reveal that, in 1997, Bill Clinton consistently refused Boris Yeltsin's offer of a 'gentlemen's agreement' that no former Soviet Republics would enter NATO: "I can't make commitments on behalf of NATO, and I'm not going to be in the position myself of vetoing NATO expansion with respect to any country, much less letting you or anyone else do so…NATO operates by consensus."

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#215

Post by blub »

The_Colonel wrote: post #101
blub wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the reason why Ukraine wasn’t invited to join back then were objections from France and Germany. The US were courting them and lobbying for them to join. This is a classic escalation spiral, where flirtations between Ukraine and NATO triggered Russian aggression which in turn intensified the collaboration of NATO and Ukraine. And so on and so forth.

Nothing NATO related happened in 2013/2014 which would trigger the invasion. People keep ignoring the fact that from the Russian side this is not (just) about security/NATO, but about the larger goal of keeping CEE (and specifically Ukraine) within its sphere of control.

First you said they were neutral, then I pointed out that they were courted by the US. 2014 was when Ukraine clearly changed its alignment to the West, which triggered Crimea.

It’s about several things, agreed.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#216

Post by elzbardico »

bpodgursky wrote: post #179
phh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And really higher prices that will destroy German industrial competitiveness

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#217

Post by Corazoor »

lumost wrote: post #195
cycomanic wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German situation was even worse then you describe. They decided to move out of coal and nuclear, but at the same time made windpower significantly more difficult and reduced investment into solar. If you look at the installed windturbines ( https://www.wind-energie.de/english/statistics/statistics-ge... ) you can see an initial boom around 2000 and a large reduction after 2004 similarly things picked up again in…

This really begs the question on whether there was some outside influence on german energy decisions. It's not a given that Russia hasn't been using non-standard negotiation methods for making Germany more dependent on Russian gas by drumming up fear on everything else.

No need to assume, it's publicly documented history: The 1969-1974 German goverment of Willy Brandt pursued a new foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, "Neue Ostpolitik". Part of that strategy was to build a system of mutual economic dependency, so that neither the german nor the soviet side would have any interest in going to war against each other.

And while Brandt was eventually replaced by the more conservative (but still social democrat) Helmut Schmidt, the general strategy of mutual economic dependency was upheld, and contributed to the eventual reunion of both Germanies.

In general, back then this strategy worked so well, that even the chancelors from the conservative CDU didn't feel compelled to change it.

Even Merkel, while far more cool and restrained towards russia than her predecessor, did not really change much in that regard. Kinda expected from a conservative though...

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#218

Post by Mewit »

danhor wrote: post #173
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.

The Wikipedia article seems pretty good on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany . You're right, gas has remained pretty steady at about 10 to 15% of electricity generation since the early 2000s. But electricity isn't the only type of energy the country needs, and in the case of gas a much more important use is for space heating. In my opinion, Germany would be in a much better position today if they had increased renewables as they have, but also maintained their nuclear generation, and instead reduced natural gas use for electricity. Then they would have freed up a huge amount of gas to heat buildings, up to 50 TWh-hr per year according to that article, and have lower emissions than they do at present. I think with hindsight, phasing out nuclear power was a big mistake.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#219

Post by gdy »

alexvoda wrote: post #147
gdy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Western Europe just learned a painful lesson that you can't trust Russia. " Russia learnt that it cannot trust West when NATO started expanding into Eastern Europe and ex-USSR not too long after Warsaw pact and the USSR dissolved. Quite strange to say that West 'trusted' Russia after it betrayed Russia.

Quit repeating this crap. There was no agreement for NATO to not expand eastward and even Gorbachev stated there was no such agreement. You are just repeating the bullshit spread by Pozner and Mearsheimer. It is still bullshit propaganda no matter how many people repeat it. I fell for it too, at the start of the war, and then I tried to combat it each time I came across it.

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner [0]

[0] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#220

Post by adventured »

nosianu wrote: post #209
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…

Yesterday's headline: "Russia’s budget surplus evaporates as energy revenues shrink" https://www.ft.com/content/d9cdc51f-5fe3-4f4a-b0e8-054ef21a2... > Russia’s budget surplus for 2022 has almost evaporated after a sharp drop in energy exports during August led to a monthly deficit of as much as Rbs360bn ($5.9bn). Russia is increasingly cutting itself now too: > Revenues look set to worsen following Russia’s suspensio…

Even more important than the economic shrinkage, is the destruction of Russian industry (including military industry) through deprivation of technology access. This is also ignored by the parent comment. Russia can't rebuild or restock their military without the required external tech (much of which has been shown to depend on the US semiconductor industry). All of Russia's more modern military hardware requires foreign semiconductors, they're wildly incompetent in nearly all aspects domestically on advanced tech hardware. The sanctions are draining their military capabilities, in the present and for the next decade or so.

Russia is trending toward empty when it comes to their military inventory and they won't be able to replenish it as things stand. The only way they can is if China steps in and provides an epic scale infusion (which is not in China's interest).

Meanwhile the US can rev its military industrial complex to an extreme degree as it sees fit; and in tandem with Ukraine, obliterate Russia's military to the extent the Russians are dumb enough to continue occupying Ukrainian territory and sending more of their soldiers and hardware to the slaughter. The US hasn't even begun to seriously rev its production capabilities.

The equation there is Russia is fucked. Their national strength derives from energy + military power / power perception - one of those is heavily destroyed (courtesy of Ukraine's military + NATO weapons + sanctions).

Russia is so incompetent and drained they're having to source drones from Iran and go begging to North Korea.

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