Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

European natural gas imports and storage reserves

bruegel.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 296 posts

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#251

Post by KptMarchewa »

jltsiren wrote: post #248
jopsen wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was already Norway, Denmark and Poland fairly close by (close in terms of air travel). But yes, Sweden and Finland in NATO is nice. Also for the fact that NATO not intervening in aggression against Sweden or Finland is hard to imagine, so getting papers on the marriage is nice for all parties involved.

The idea is that if Sweden and Finland are not members of NATO, their airspace would be closed to NATO air forces in a NATO–Russia conflict. Then the only way to reach Baltic airspace would be flying past Kaliningrad. Also, as far as I understand, the combat radius fighter jets is quite short. It's something like 500 to 1200 km, depending on aircraft type and weapons load. Having bases 100 or 200 km closer is already…

The fighter jets can refuel during flight, which is a routine operation.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#252

Post by trasz »

mythrwy wrote: post #156
trasz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has already been blackmailed by Russia - when they invaded Ukraine last time, in 2014. That's how we know Russia can only be dealt with by force: because we've tried to do it the other way and it failed terribly.

How do you envision "dealing with Russia through force" going down just curiously? I would imagine there is a similar point of view in many Russians regarding the West (and they can make arguments about abuses and how intrinsically evil the other party is and patriotic jingles and all that too). So how, on that road, does this end? I think we know the answer and it really and truly is awful and the end of the world w…

I envision it exactly the same way it's already been going for the past six months: Russia has lost about half of their armed forces.

The road ends the same way it ended last time, 30 years ago - in adjustment of Russian borders.

Unless you claim that a state that can't even manufacture tanks or ordinary cars (or phones; Russia is wholly dependent on technology imports from Europe) is still capable of remanufacturing nuclear warheads, and is willing to sacrifice itself as a state to use them to... not even prove the point, because it would still be a defeat.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#253

Post by trasz »

tablespoon wrote: post #191
mythrwy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you envision "dealing with Russia through force" going down just curiously? I would imagine there is a similar point of view in many Russians regarding the West (and they can make arguments about abuses and how intrinsically evil the other party is and patriotic jingles and all that too). So how, on that road, does this end? I think we know the answer and it really and truly is awful and the end of the world w…

> How do you envision "dealing with Russia through force" going down just curiously? FYI, they're "dealing with Russia through force" right now . It's just through proxies, and it's going pretty well.

I'd say Ukraine is dealing with Russia through force quite directly, without any proxies. (The context here is that Russians like to pretend they are fighting against NATO; this is of course not true, they are fighting against Ukraine, which got some help from NATO, but it's relatively small compared to NATOs capabilities.)

Although there might soon be some "proxies" soon, like Azerbaijan (unfortunately) and (hopefully soon) Georgia.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#254

Post by trasz »

dnh44 wrote: post #245
MichaelCollins wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's a a reasonable assessment if you accept following three (I think easy to accept) items. - That the US has a long term goal of preventing a "peer competitor" from arising. - That the US has a financial and strategic interest in causing the collapse of the Russian Federation. - The US leadership is capable of intelligent long term thinking (so we have to ignore Trump/Biden). https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_rep…

Except that those aren't really US goals anymore, those are wins for the entire western world.

Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#255

Post by theroofian »

dnh44 wrote: post #233
jcfrei wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After his term as German chancellor was up (1998-2005), Gerhard Schröder became chairman of several gas companies that were (majority) owned by the Russian state (Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, Gazprom). There was nothing covert about the Kremlin courting Germany with its cheap gas - it was plain to see.

Cheap energy is great for Germany's energy intensive heavy industries, and strategically important. Russia and Germany getting cozy and growing together economically couldn't have made the US or the UK very comfortable and I believe this was at least a part of the US motivation to pull Ukraine from Russia's orbit. I mean it makes a lot more sense to me than the US actually giving a shit about Ukrainians and their fre…

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is a reasonable take, especially following the way the US reacts to any prospects of getting the Nord Stream 2 started. “US pulling X from Y’s orbit” has been happening around the world since at least the 70s, nothing surprising here.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#256

Post by trasz »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #212
js8 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 geopoliti…

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

It's also not done in multiple other countries which don't happen to be US military allies, like Saudi Arabia. You're seeing a pattern that isn't there. Totalitarianism is just an excuse.

Also, I'm sorry, but claiming China - which hadn't invaded anyone for decades - is as bloodthirsty as Russia (or US for that matter) is just silly.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#257

Post by dnh44 »

trasz wrote: post #254
dnh44 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a a reasonable assessment if you accept following three (I think easy to accept) items. - That the US has a long term goal of preventing a "peer competitor" from arising. - That the US has a financial and strategic interest in causing the collapse of the Russian Federation. - The US leadership is capable of intelligent long term thinking (so we have to ignore Trump/Biden). https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_rep…

Except that those aren't really US goals anymore, those are wins for the entire western world. Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.

I dunno maybe? I don’t think the outcome is obvious.

It’s easy to imagine Ukraine coming out just as big a loser as Russia even if they “win”. The EU is in for a tough time too.

I do wonder where we’ll be in 12 months time.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#258

Post by jltsiren »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #251
jltsiren wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that if Sweden and Finland are not members of NATO, their airspace would be closed to NATO air forces in a NATO–Russia conflict. Then the only way to reach Baltic airspace would be flying past Kaliningrad. Also, as far as I understand, the combat radius fighter jets is quite short. It's something like 500 to 1200 km, depending on aircraft type and weapons load. Having bases 100 or 200 km closer is already…

The fighter jets can refuel during flight, which is a routine operation.

Tankers won't help here. The problem is that NATO fighters would effectively have to fly over Russia before they can reach the Baltic states. The area where tankers can operate safely already has plenty of NATO airbases.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#259

Post by Gravityloss »

danhor wrote: post #237
Mewit wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 posit…

In general, nuclear power and renewables mix quite poorly. This is especially relevant for replacing gas, since gas is great at providing variable power (when needed) which neither nuclear power nor (most) renewables are good at. You can also see this move to more variable gas generation by looking at the increased gas power plant install base ( https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.... ) withou…

You can heat houses with other methods than gas, like ground or air heat pumps that use electricity. It might be somewhat complicated though.

Since it's not a drop in replacement, driving this change through might take decades and require changing building legislation etc. I'm unfamiliar what is the situation in the different European countries regarding this, but I know there are EU countries where practically nobody heats with gas.

Building a single house or building around a heating solution is a long term commitment. It might not be easy to change afterwards. This then implicitly makes assumptions about the availability and price of said heating solution.

Politics and national security concerns are inevitable around a large scale energy questions. These things don't "just happen" in a "free market". For example large scale electricity producers or gas suppliers are "too big to fail" and are actively managed by governments.

Re: European natural gas imports and storage reserves

#260

Post by fastaguy88 »

gdy wrote: post #229
The_Colonel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Most of the new members have been invaded by Russia in the past 100 years.

And Russia has been invaded by most of the European countries in the same time period. Starting from the Intervention and Poland's invasion to the invasion by Germany and its allies.

I’m puzzled by this statement. Russia has been invaded by Germany several times. Has it been invaded by France, Spain, Poland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, or The UK in the past 100 years? As a parochial American, what have I missed?
Post reply on HN