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EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

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Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#41

Post by lisasays »

hunglee2 wrote: post #9

EU continues to important Russian oil, it has just been refined and rebadged by India, Saudi Arabia, China and others, so that a statement like this could be made. EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold

What numbers are you working off of? The indications I'm seeing are that some rebagged oil maybe getting through to the EU - but not at scale.

It's definitely not simply a matter of moral high ground. Independent of the sympathies they may have for the Ukrainian side -- it is objectively in the cold, pragmatic self-interest of European countries to not let themselves be beholden to as capricious and unstable a supplier as Russia.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#42

Post by ffgjgf1 »

mkl95 wrote: post #2

EU traded off massive inflation for independence from Russian fossil fuels. A victory for politicians, not so much for the Otto Normalverbraucher.

Not taking steps to decrease Europe’s reliance on Russia fossil fuels in the years after Putin took power was immensely idiotic. Both politically and economically.

At this point there was no non-painful way to do this.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#43

Post by ffgjgf1 »

codethief wrote: post #22
mkl95 wrote: post #2

EU traded off massive inflation for independence from Russian fossil fuels. A victory for politicians, not so much for the Otto Normalverbraucher.

Fossil fuel prices in Europe are actually back to pre-war levels. (Nevertheless, inflation is still rather high but that seems unrelated to energy now.)

There were already quite inflated for at least half a year or so prior to the war.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#44

Post by anovikov »

hunglee2 wrote: post #9

EU continues to important Russian oil, it has just been refined and rebadged by India, Saudi Arabia, China and others, so that a statement like this could be made. EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold

Well, EU was never dependent on Russian oil. Oil is a commodity. A large international market for it exists and it is cheap to transport, and sufficient import throughput was always possible. So there was no dependence: at no point Putin could say, "do X or else we will cut your oil supply" - that won't have any effect, they'd just buy oil elsewhere (heating market up considerably yes, but entire world market in which Russia doesn't have such a high share, equally). Russian choice would be to either sell it's oil to someone else instead, resulting in no effective change and no pressure applied to Europe at all, or not sell it to anyone and ruin his country, but having everyone else pay probably, double or triple the price to Arabs/USA for the oil they import.

What changed now is that he has to sell that oil to others at a steep discount leaving him almost no profit, with the middlemen making all that profit instead - which is OK.

But, EU statement mainly referred to gas, not oil. With gas, situation is a lot clearer - Russia simply stopped producing the gas EU stopped buying, because they can't technically sell it elsewhere, and EU buys it mainly from USA. It took almost a year for market to readjust but now the prices are same as they used to be before all these events.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#45

Post by SXX »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #37
SXX wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU never put any sanctions against Russian gas. The only reason why EU stopped buying it is because of Putin genious attempt to freeze EU by blocking gas exports.

On 3 December 2022, the Council adopted Decision (CFSP) 2022/2369 , which established the price cap for crude oil at $60 per barrel.

Okay pardon my far-from-perfect use of English after a day of sleep deprivation.

I should have said natural gas, not gasoline.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#46

Post by Ekaros »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #42
mkl95 wrote: post #2

EU traded off massive inflation for independence from Russian fossil fuels. A victory for politicians, not so much for the Otto Normalverbraucher.

Not taking steps to decrease Europe’s reliance on Russia fossil fuels in the years after Putin took power was immensely idiotic. Both politically and economically. At this point there was no non-painful way to do this.

Now if we only could get rid of USA and dollar as well. For truly independent and free Europe. The actions on SWIFT system proved that they cannot be trusted as reliable partners.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#47

Post by Barrin92 »

mkl95 wrote: post #2

EU traded off massive inflation for independence from Russian fossil fuels. A victory for politicians, not so much for the Otto Normalverbraucher.

>EU traded off massive inflation

Single digit inflation with a pandemic, supply chain disruptions a war and an energy crisis is a lot of things but hardly massive. Given the horror stories that we were promised by defenders of the status quo this is a joke, and I say that as a German citizen who had to absorb a few nasty electricity bills.

If this is all it takes to wean ourselves off autocratic blackmail we have a lot to be ashamed off for the years where we pretended this would impoverish us and we'd freeze to death. Turns out that has a lot more to do with our ex-chancellor sitting on a Gazprom board than reality.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#48

Post by carlosjobim »

horeszko wrote: post #24
hunglee2 wrote: post #9

EU continues to important Russian oil, it has just been refined and rebadged by India, Saudi Arabia, China and others, so that a statement like this could be made. EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold

>"EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold" They may or may not be paying a premium, but it has nothing to do with "moral high ground". Its to do with not giving the regional agressor leverage over your economy. The war between Russia and Ukraine exists in the military domain, the war between Europe and Russia is currently in the economic domain. Even if sanction…

So you're smart enough to understand this, and the European Union is smart enough to understand this - but the Russians are too stupid to understand it?

You don't have any duty to defend every action of European politicians. You will certainly never be rewarded for your loyalty to them. The best reward you can hope for is increased taxation of your labour and the worst reward is being drafted into an industrialized war.

The EU are not winning against Russia by purchasing energy from them through middlemen.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#49

Post by belltaco »

carlosjobim wrote: post #48
horeszko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold" They may or may not be paying a premium, but it has nothing to do with "moral high ground". Its to do with not giving the regional agressor leverage over your economy. The war between Russia and Ukraine exists in the military domain, the war between Europe and Russia is currently in the economic domain. Even if sanction…

So you're smart enough to understand this, and the European Union is smart enough to understand this - but the Russians are too stupid to understand it? You don't have any duty to defend every action of European politicians. You will certainly never be rewarded for your loyalty to them. The best reward you can hope for is increased taxation of your labour and the worst reward is being drafted into an industrialized w…

> but the Russians are too stupid to understand it

Who said they don't understand it? What can they do about it? Nothing.

Re: EU achieved independence from Russian fossil fuels

#50

Post by The_Colonel »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #39
reducesuffering wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Border dispute? They invaded the country, surrounded the capital and shelled the shit out of it.

Yes, because they shelled the minority who wanted independence since 2014. Nato bombed yugoslavia for months for the same thing, and they still act as a defensive organization.

We could discuss the 2014 events for hours and in any case the shelling has been going from both directions.

But there's one clear fact - the war in Donbas was calming down in intensity in the years preceding 2022. In the three years 2019-2021, 78 civilians died in total, mostly from old unexploded mines. There was absolutely no "need" to make it a full scale war and ramp up the number to tens of thousands civilians dead.

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