“If I were Putin I’d love someone blowing up NS2. It makes more sense to sell half of the amount of gas at twice the price. Or perhaps 10x the price before long.”
Well, yes and no. OPEC got burned in the past, several times, by letting the price of oil get too high - driving its customers to look for new energy sources. Putin would be wise to avoid that even though, today, it looks as though the Europeans (i.e., Germans) are absolute IDIOTS on energy policy.
The risk is that Europeans (i.e., Germans) are very smart people and, eventually, will see through their Green Party and move to break loose of Russian domination. But if the Russians keep the price down, then the people there won’t have the incentive to stand up to the Greens and Putin can keep his stranglehold on them.
Concur.
But let me note that the situation is different from 1970s, there are not many alternatives for energy, and the European idiocies (rejections of coal and nuclear) just makes it much worse for them.