Posted on 03/14/2014 7:50:56 AM PDT by thetallguy24
How specifically should the United States react to Russia’s Ukrainian intervention?
The owner of one Knoxville, Tennessee liquor store has weighed in by having a fire sale on Russian vodka, which he won’t re-import until Moscow “gets its act together.”
Former U.S. Representative and Republican (and Libertarian) presidential contender Ron Paul seems to have the opposite attitude, and thinks any sanctions against Russia by Washington would be “criminal” acts intended to provoke a war.
Loosening restrictions on American exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) rests somewhere in between these two approaches and has been advocated by a cast as diverse as Senator Rand Paul, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and, apparently, even the Obama administration itself.
Removing limitations on the export of natural gas would spur economic growth and job creation, but why is it now being brought up as a method of making Moscow rethink its aggression?
If America runs on Dunkin Donuts, then Russia runs on fuel exports. Over half of the revenues that prop up Vladimir Putin’s government come from production of oil and natural gas. It is the biggest exporter of natural gas in the world. Money from gas and oil exchange also enriches the gangsters and kleptocrats who exert so much power in Russia. Gazprom, the sprawling state-run energy corporation, has ties as deep to organized crime syndicates as they have to Putin.
About half of the natural gas Gazprom exports annually finds its way to Europe. Different nations depend on Russian supplies to varying degrees. In the Baltic States and former Soviet Republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, Moscow supplies 100% of natural gas. Finland,
(Excerpt) Read more at hardhatters.com ...
I call it quicksand money...as soon as it hits the ground....it's gone.
Let's see....Kerry said...here's a billion.......Where'd that go??
Just like you can’t hop a jet plane like you can a freight train, you can’t take an oil tanker and just fill it with LNG.
Yes but not for the reason of effecting Putin today.
but may take too long to accomplish before its too late.
No may about it. It will take years. And it will just be a trickle for quite a while compared to a meaningful volume.
Could we possibly export enough natural gas, at sufficiently competitive price, to make such strategy even possible?
Much more likely to totally undermine the Russian Federation’s stranglehold of natural gas supplies to Europe would be to start mining Methane Hydrate from the ocean floor. We know it is there, the supply is definitely much more plentiful than that which may be recovered even by advanced extraction methods from underground sources, and once reclamation is sufficiently advanced, it could render all other sources of “fossil fuel” energy pretty much a vanity or boutique production.
Methane Hydrate exists almost everywhere at ocean depths, where the coldest, most dense water is found, and the temperature does not vary above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Methane Hydrate, which forms as a physical combination of natural gas and water, under conditions of pressure and a very narrow temperature band, is stable until the temperature rises above about 42 degrees Fahrenheit, which should make dredging operations to recover the substance relatively easy, especially compared to the problems of deep-water drilling for petroleum or natural gas pockets.
I believe the Japanese are already working on recovering Methane Hydrate on an economically feasible basis.
two,too,to,2 late!
Huge jump in your logic. It has been successfully produced. It was not cheap and easy.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It does not automatically make it the cheapest fuel.
Yup. Had we exploited our natural resources (Drill baby drill!) years ago we’d be a long ways closer to energy independence, which would have limited Putin’s ability to increase his power and influence.
What many don’t know is drill baby, drill baby has been going on for years for natural gas especially in the shale plays. That’s why the price of natural gas is so low and why we have so much of it and still have lots more on the way.
Europeans pay three times what we do for natural gas. We wouldn’t completely cut Russia out of the market. Instead, we’d kill their current insane profit levels.
Only armed resistance will do that. If Ukrainians can’t be bothered to fight for what’s theirs, it’s not clear how much of a role we should have. Meanwhile the EU is napping through the entire episode. If they’re not concerned, why should we be, considering we’re literally an ocean away?
And which US LNG export facility are you going to load from?
How many years does it take to build them?
How long to build the surplus LNG tankers that do not exist today?
You are correct. My point was you need specialized LNG tankers.
You and I both know the federales need to get off their asses. We both know it won’t happen overnight. It would be nice to know we’ve embarked on a path that will makes price manipulation much harder if not impossible.
LNG tankers would make a wonderful military target. I bet it would be hard to find a crew. Especially after the missile hits it.
Putin could shut it down by a 5% boost in his funding to radical American environmental groups.
There is no point to exporting natural gas to Europe if it will only allow further mothballing of nuclear power plants. Only after the Europeans show they are serious by announcing plans to generate every megawatt they can from coal and nuclear power plants, should the U.S. accept any burden to support them with natural gas exports that are not economically justified.
Same goes with those huge oil tankers. The problem is that the Middle Eastern countries that sponsor terrorism don’t want their meal tickets cancelled. Tanker go boom. Money go POOF! They teach that in Terrorist 101.
“Middle Eastern countries that sponsor terrorism don’t want their meal tickets cancelled.”
LNG tankers from America to Europe wouldn’t be a factor, in fact it might help Middle Eastern countries’ bottom line if they blew up.
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