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Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

economist.com

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Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#51

Post by klodolph »

evandijk70 wrote: post #19
politelemon wrote: post #5

> enjoyed the warmest October I abhor this kind of language that news sites use. It takes away from the seriousness of the underlying cause (and its effects), and associates hot/warm weather with "good". Public apathy towards climate change starts here.

The seriousness of climate change is not lost on me, but your comment is rather heartless. In the UK the 'eating or heating?' question is real for many families this winter. It is fair to say that the warm October was a gift from the gods.

"Heartless" is uncalled for. The warmer weather may mean that fewer people are suffering today, but it is also a symptom of a trend that leads towards more suffering in the future. Is it heartless to think of those people in the future?

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#52

Post by cromka »

bertil wrote: post #21
uri4 wrote: post #15

Lets hope climate warming will kick in this winter. Or 30 million refugees from Ukraine will flood Europe...

There might be as many people from Pakistan, East Africa, or China who have to migrate because of global warming this winter too. Not sure whether they’ll go to Europe, but millions isn’t an exaggeration in those cases.

China is too big of a territory; if the Chinese needed to migrate because of global warming, they'd likely move within their own land. Probably the same case with Pakistan.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#53

Post by dotancohen »

photochemsyn wrote: post #50

One major theme in the ongoing US-Russia conflict over the past decade-plus (dating back to at least 2008) is a fight over who gets to sell oil and gas to Europe. With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, and with countries like Qatar refusing to alter long-term energy contracts to increase supplies to Europe, and with Iran still under the Trump-era sanctions (which Biden continued), that mostly leaves the US…

  > With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines ... that mostly leaves
  > the USA as the primary supplier.
Does that suggest motive for the destruction? Who else has both motive and means?

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#54

Post by birracerveza »

bheadmaster wrote: post #37
birracerveza wrote: post #35

I'm surprised I haven't come across conspiracy theories that use this as confirmation that "they" control the weather...

I'll admit it has passed my mind several times. I never said it out loud (until now), but the coincidence that the very year EU loses its main gas supply we get sunny winter without snow at all... I know it's probably a coincidence, but my mind doesn't like coincidences. There's always this "what if" voice inside my head.

It's actually the opposite, you have a pattern-seeking brain that likes coincidences. It's why we notice patterns, because some are not coincidences but outright consequences, however indirect they may be!

But there's a lot of coincidences in the world, some being so unlikely and so unfortunate, our mind can refuse to accept that, well.. it can be just a coincidence.

The longest-reigning UK monarch dies at the start of the shortest term PM's tenure ... it's incredibly unlikely, yet it happened. Should there be an explanation behind it? Or maybe it's just a coincidence? You decide.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#55

Post by dotancohen »

paganel wrote: post #39

Looking at this chart [1] they're still 6 or 7 times more expensive compared to two years ago and further back, i.e. ~15 EUR/Mwh compared to the present ~100 EUR/Mwh. No energy-intensive industry can sustain a 6 or 7 times price increase of its core input. [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas

That's going to shut down a lot of aluminium in countries that use petrochemicals to process it. Iceland is going to see its industry boom, as they use geothermal to process aluminium. I'd once heard the argument that Iceland exports energy in the form of aluminium billets. That's becoming more and more apparent now.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#56

Post by dotancohen »

sph wrote: post #13
politelemon wrote: post #5

> enjoyed the warmest October I abhor this kind of language that news sites use. It takes away from the seriousness of the underlying cause (and its effects), and associates hot/warm weather with "good". Public apathy towards climate change starts here.

It is relatively good. Climate change is bad, families left out in the cold because they can't afford rising gas and electricity prices is bad, so we are lucky in our being fucked. It could have been worse. Silver lining and all that.

Looking at this as a silver lining is like looking at your arm amputation as a silver lining to your hangnail.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#57

Post by kstenerud »

photochemsyn wrote: post #50

One major theme in the ongoing US-Russia conflict over the past decade-plus (dating back to at least 2008) is a fight over who gets to sell oil and gas to Europe. With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, and with countries like Qatar refusing to alter long-term energy contracts to increase supplies to Europe, and with Iran still under the Trump-era sanctions (which Biden continued), that mostly leaves the US…

> One major theme in the ongoing US-Russia conflict over the past decade-plus (dating back to at least 2008) is a fight over who gets to sell oil and gas to Europe.

No, it wasn't. America wasn't pushing to sell to Europe, and Europe was becoming more and more reliant on Russian and Asian gas. The shift to American gas (and every other country they can get it from) happened after Russia invaded Ukraine and then shut off the taps when Europe instituted sanctions.

Iranian sanctions were mostly inertial, but have now turned out to be good considering that Iran is negotiating nuclear tech in exchange for shipping weapons to Russia.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#58

Post by pavlov »

dotancohen wrote: post #53
photochemsyn wrote: post #50

One major theme in the ongoing US-Russia conflict over the past decade-plus (dating back to at least 2008) is a fight over who gets to sell oil and gas to Europe. With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, and with countries like Qatar refusing to alter long-term energy contracts to increase supplies to Europe, and with Iran still under the Trump-era sanctions (which Biden continued), that mostly leaves the US…

> With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines ... that mostly leaves > the USA as the primary supplier. Does that suggest motive for the destruction? Who else has both motive and means?

Selling more gas to Europe isn’t a massive windfall to USA. The Biden administration has bigger fish to fry and wouldn’t risk such an intervention in Swedish waters just as Sweden is joining NATO.

My money is on Russian hardliner factions operating rogue without Putin’s approval. He can’t admit he doesn’t know who did it. The Russian state security apparatus is so large, we have no idea what kind of internal tensions exist. Putin may have unleashed something he doesn’t control anymore.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#59

Post by rowanajmarshall »

pydry wrote: post #31

Mild autumn weather [ and not enough storage capacity to take advantage ] has sent European gas prices plummeting. 90% full in the UK means about a week's worth of gas. In Germany it's about 2.5 months.

Although the UK has an appreciable percentage of Europe's LNG re-gasification capacity, while Germany has none, and imports LNG via Belgium and the Netherlands instead. The UK has storage, it's just sitting in ships off the coast.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#60

Post by Sakos »

photochemsyn wrote: post #50

One major theme in the ongoing US-Russia conflict over the past decade-plus (dating back to at least 2008) is a fight over who gets to sell oil and gas to Europe. With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, and with countries like Qatar refusing to alter long-term energy contracts to increase supplies to Europe, and with Iran still under the Trump-era sanctions (which Biden continued), that mostly leaves the US…

I was curious about exact numbers and found this in the most recent EU report:

https://imgur.com/a/HIkyO05

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