Posted on 02/19/2023 10:21:07 AM PST by Chode
After a year of hard fighting there are a rush of observers trying to make sense of the current balance of power in Ukraine. The focus in often on (often small) movements in the frontlines, casualties, or the performance of particular platforms and systems.
Those things matter, but wars are not generally fought to take individual trenches or solely to inflict casualties. They are fought for strategic objectives.
In this episode I dig into Russia's history of Empire, its modern strategic objectives, and try to assess whether or not the war in Ukraine represents a success or failure by Russia's own chosen metrics (as far as they can be determined). My suggestion is that in repeating a number of the mistakes previously made by leaders of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, it can be argued that Putin has already condemned the Russian federation to a strategic reverse.
What remains to be seen, is whether Ukraine can win a victory from Russia's defeat, or if it will be left to lose as well.
FR is now field day for Putinskies? Is Tucker your leader?
Russia failed on day eight of their seven day war.
View all things through the prism of civilization’s lifeblood — oil.
When one types “Ukraine has none” there will then explode a series of links quoting millions of barrels and millions of cubic feet of gas “Ukraine has” and exclamation that the guy who said none doesn’t know anything and is completely wrong.
So let’s do this a bit different. Russia’s proven reserves are about 107 billion barrels. Now you have to understand some nuances of that. They have the Bazhenov shale, largest shale in the world, and they haven’t even bothered fracking it yet because they have so much conventional non-shale oil that there is no need. The US quotes about 69 billion barrels, including the most optimistic assessments of various shale.
On the list of reserves from oil’s bible, BP’s World Statistical Report, Ukraine doesn’t even appear. Norway is Europe’s primary source and lists at 8.5 (Note Kazahkstan lists 3X that).
So no, Russia is not trying to steal Ukraine’s oil. They are not worth even mentioning.
As for gas, Russia is overwhelmingly dominant. US 12 trillion cubic meters (when you look this stuff up, stay with cubic meters, not cubic feet, needless confusion). Russia 37.4 trillion cubic meters. Qatar 24.7. Iran 34.7.
Turkmenistan 13.6.
Ukraine 1.1, optimistic.
So nobody is trying to steal Ukraine’s tiny gas totals. Not even worth mentioning.
Russia has all that land surface area. They will find more oil. And gas. The US . . . has been exploring and drilling like hell for well over 100 years. Just how much more did we expect to find?
Ukraine is not the hill to die on. Russia is destined for dominance unless a direct, explicit goal is announced to seize their oil fields and deployment of military to try.
This will NEVER EVER happen from a Green administration.
I forgot an unmentioned fact- the rise of Chinese banks in Russia, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd to name one, and many others have opened 600 branches in Russia, offering anywhere from 9-14 percent interest.
Yuan and Ruble fully convertible. A lot of happy Ivans. They are savers, always have been, until the US banks hit the Russian markets ( now gone) they rarely took any financing and saved for purchases.
It seems all is well in the Russian banks, the bankrupted West never did like savers.
Russia is looking the wrong way. They need to develop and expand east of the Urals.
Ukraine never was a threat to Russia. This is all about Putin’s ego.
Owning oil is not the be all and end all.
If it were Venezuela would have an empire.
Arab sheikhdoms likewise. Saudi Arabia would own Yemen.
Or, heck, the US would have managed to prop up South Vietnam.
There are plenty of factors feeding national power. Having powerful friends for instance.
As for US reserves, the US is currently tapping immense resources in oil shale. Current tech can keep the US energy independent indefinitely. And that is because just a little exploration consistently finds more. The only thing holding the US back is political will.
Don’t use words like immense. Use specific numbers, and with specific API viscosity quotes. Shale is light tight oil. Urals is not. One is diesel rich with constituent proportions up near 40%. The other is not. Guess which.
80 million year geology doesn’t care about politics.
Peace in our time.
Well, you can look it up for yourself.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-reserves-by-country/
Just one of many sources. Reserves are a difficult number to take seriously as there is no consistent procedure for determining reserves, and it tends to change rapidly with changes in tech and soft factors, such as investment climate, regulation, political risk premiums, etc.
Petroleum is a fungible international commodity moreover. The US, with its naval dominance, is able to command most global resources at need. The British with the RN and its domination of the global trading system was able to do so also, in its day.
I therefore defend the use of “immense”. Lets take it to mean “far more than sufficient for our purposes”. A lack of petroleum will not constrain the operation of US forces or its economy in any conflict we can contemplate in the next few decades at least.
Well if some YouTube boob says so who are we to disagree.
API viscosity is (almost) irrelevant to this question.
Refineries are able to vary the yield of different products considerably given their feedstock. The US uses a larger fraction of gasoline in its civilian economy. In any case the potential needs of diesel for military operations are always going to be a small fraction of civilian needs for ither oil products.
Your argument amounts to a quibble.
Yes, fully HALF of NATO's armor, artillery, missiles, air craft carriers, cruisers, frigates, corvettes, jets, transport planes, etc. will have been destroyed in Ukraine.
/mordant sarcasm
Regards,
You are free to disagree. The proper way to do so, per the Marquess of Queensbury (yes, boxing rules stem from the same sources), or let us say the Western intellectual tradition, is to directly address his points and dispute his facts or reasoning.
Then, why do you or the powers that be think Ukrainians can win a war with Russia? You're just contradicted yourself.
Yes, an army of 600,000 well-funded and armed by NATO is most certainly a threat to any of its neighbors. If Russia or China was training and funding that kind of army in Mexico, do you think we'd tolerate it?
But, the reason Putin went in is because the Biden regime authorized an offensive in Donbass that was about to wipe out the ethnic Russian population there. And, never mind, there were 900,000 Russian citizens living there before the war started. Sounds like as good or better a reason for Russia to go into Ukraine than we had in the first Iraq war.
Putin can't save ethnic Russians but it was okay for us to save the people of Kuwait?
Well, I wasn’t talking military. I was talking food transportation. aka Trucks.
As to cut points you can vary yield of constituent parts varying cut point only if the temperature interface of the constituent parts is adjacent parts. It has no effect on gasoline production vs, say, asphalt.
There is no magic. If refineries could create desired constituent yields from all crudes, there would be no point in having an assay.
Like so:
https://www.equinor.com/energy/crude-oil-assays
Equinor’s assay page.
Select Bakken and anything with an API that is actual oil and not NGL, like Angola’s oil Girassol.
Have a look at the yields for temperature (cut) points.
Bakken is 30+% gasoline. 20% diesel.
Girrasol is 31% diesel and 20ish gasoline.
This matters. It’s not about pushing tanks around. It’s about tractors and trucks.
Apologies. I have seen Urals assay and I thought Statoil (Equinor) was the source but they don’t present Urals on their list, at least not anymore.
There are other assay pages. I think Exxon has one.
As it happens, the US is a large net exporter of diesel.
Some of that doubtless comes from US refineries processing imported crude, from Canada Mexico and Venezuela. But between one thing and another the US is not short of petroleum or petroleum products, and isn’t going to be.
What a laff. DeNazification! This coming from Putin whose rivals fall out windows or inhale ricin spores. I suppose the Ukraine with its 40 million population and retread military was a serious threat to Russia. Just like Finland was in 1940. As for the eastern territories being Russian, a real Nazi used that exact same argument in 1938 about a piece of territory called Sudetenland.
Hey maybe Putin will skip Poland and try for Alaska next. And you’ll be at the aitfield in Nome to greet him. And don’t take this as me being one of Speedy’s morons. I look at this was the was I looked at Iran Iraq 40 yesrs ago. From a distance without a rooting interest. It would have been better if Zelensky had caught that C17 and someone had capped Putin.
Russia is fighting
a three front war
Communism
Communism
Communism
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