Posted on 03/01/2008 8:17:59 AM PST by kronos77
On February 28 Hungary’s Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany joined Russia’s outgoing and incoming presidents, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, in Moscow to seal an intergovernmental agreement on Gazprom’s further expansion into European Union territory via Hungary.
Hungary’s privately owned energy company MOL is staying out of this intergovernmental, politically-colored deal. MOL is a partner in the U.S.-backed Nabucco project of the EU. The Hungarian government’s accession to South Stream, however, adds to the recent series of defections from the Nabucco project (see EDM, January 24, 28, 29, February 5, 28).
The agreement just signed envisages building an extension of Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline through Hungary. It caps the recent series of deals rushed through by the Kremlin with Austria, Bulgaria, and Serbia, to build pipelines and storage sites for South Stream gas into Europe. These agreements are cementing Gazprom’s monopoly in parts of Europe, precluding alternatives and aborting Nabucco.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamestown.org ...
Why is this important?
Well, Russia concluded its supply route of natural gas to EU. US-EU project “Nabocce” is with this, defeted.
But While Russia was winning Austra, Serbia, Bulgaria, Italy and Hungary,
US and EU got Kosovo...
/end sarc/
But While Russia was winning Austra, Serbia, Bulgaria, Italy and Hungary, US and EU got Kosovo... /end sarc/"
Russia plays the energy geopolitics game much better than the US. Bush, continuing Clintons wrong headed approach to Kosovo, has needlessly put the US on the side of the jihadists in the Balkans and pushed Serbia, who could have been a natural ally away.
Euro-socialists are on board with KGB Putin’s plan to use nationalized energy supplies as political weapons of intimidation and blackmail. What a surprise.
The same way US got South Viet Nam.
Lol! Shut up.
Haha back at you. Serbia just gave away its sovereignty to Putin’s nationalized fascist gas monopoly. What do they get in return? Will their brown-nosing of the KGB mafia in the Kremlin get them back Kosovo? Nope. Putin has played the Serbs for fools.
No, Serbia had no choice but to turn to Russia. If the US State Dept had any brains, they would’ve beat Russia to it. But I guess idiocy prevails over there. Quite sad, given the relationship the U.S. and Serbia once had.
Many Serbs and Montenegrins have traditionally held pro-Russian sympathies, however, and Russian businessmen with cash to spend have sought to make use of this reservoir of goodwill. Their biggest success to date came in Moscow on January 25, when Putin and his heir-apparent, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, witnessed the signing of some major economic agreements in the presence of Tadic and Kostunica. The most important deals involve the sale of Serbia's state oil monopoly NIS to a Gazprom-led group and the construction by Gazprom of a pipeline through Serbia. The sale of NIS will reportedly take place at a fraction of its market value, according to Serbian Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic of G17 Plus. The EU objected to the absence of competitive bidding, but Kostunica ensured that Russia would get what it wanted. Dinkic said that unnamed cabinet officials told him that it would be politically "indecent" to ask Russia to pay a market price after it had supported Serbia so faithfully on Kosovo. The Gazprom agreements state that the valid texts are in Serbian and Russian, but in case of a dispute, the Russian text is binding. As the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" commented on January 29, this is also a political statement. To some observers, the arrangement recalls the "joint stock companies" that Stalin established in much of the communist Balkans following World War II so that the Soviet Union could exploit the natural resources and economies of those countries. - LINK
"Nabucco is far away from being handed the final blow," Reinhard Mitschek, the head of the Nabucco consortium, told Austrian newspaper Die Presse. "Besides RWE, further interested parties are knocking at our doors. They want to join the project because it has a lot of future potential," he said. Nabucco, held by Romania's Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz, Austria's OMV, Turkey's Botas and MOL, on Tuesday took on a sixth partner, Germany's RWE, forming a powerful team that may be joined soon by France's Gaz de France. "We believe that both RWE and Gaz de France represent a high additional value to the Nabucco project that proved its need for very strong economic and political support from the European companies and governments," Benjamin Lakatos, director of MOL Gas Midstream, said in a statement. - LINKAnalysts said Monday that Russia's moves on South Stream would not necessarily sound a death knell to Nabucco. "Basically it is neither positive nor negative," said Alfred Reisenberger, of UniCredit. Reisenberger argued that, while South Stream might indeed have been conceived to derail Nabucco, the EU-sponsored project would probably not be stopped. "Nabucco has become too big to fail," he said by telephone from Vienna. The United States has thrown its weight behind it. "The Nabucco pipeline will be built, I am convinced, because it makes commercial sense," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza was quoted as saying Friday in Brussels. Reisenberger said that, apart from Washington, German energy giant RWE was another heavyweight behind the pipeline. RWE CEO Jurgen Grossmann told reporters Friday that his company was bent on delivering gas from Nabucco in 2012 or 2013. - LINK
As someone who has worked in international oil industry for 25 years I will say that agreements like that of NIS and Gazprom are combed over by lawyers and legal analysts so usually when disputes occur it is force majure.
RFE’s source is the Serbian Economy Minister. This information comes from the Serb government itself. Facts are facts. Serbia has been had. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Tricked. Suckered. Rooked. Gaffled.
You love to provoke people Joe and I see through it. Most of the time I read what you write and I think ‘well he is at it again.’ I dont usually bother to answer you because, well, it it not worth the effort for me. You see, I am a highly trained subsea equipment specialist for an international oil company, and I dont need to argue with an enlisted navy person. It is below me and my intelligence level.
First you make an ad hominem attack on radio free europe, now you make an appeal to your own authority. Any other logical fallacies you want to throw out? Don’t you have any facts to present here to defend your arguments? Any facts at all?
I am not used to shooting from the hip, something you like to do. I meet a lot of people like you that shoot from the hip. They are an absolute disaster in a highly technical environment. They make rash decisions and statements without really analyzing the underlying facts.
Is it your assertion that the Serb state oil company has actually been sold to Russia at market value? Is the Serb economy minister a liar? A US CIA stooge perhaps? Maybe a Soros agent, spreading lies about holy Serbia?
I dont know what sort of assets were involved in the 51% purchase of NIS. Are you privy to that? I am not. If it was production or merely processing facilites. Serbia may have been offering them a pipeline right of way which in itself is of value. Most likely the gas will be dehydrated prior to going under the black sea or else they would get a hydrate plug. Those are terrible. Depressurizing, methanol injection. As I understand the pipeline will be finished in 2012. So that mean, to me, implying without the facts that they may have been paying for mostly the right of way, perhaps a little compression before it makes its way to Germany, and other european destinations.
Russian bid for Serbia's NIS 'humiliating' -"The offer is humiliating," Mr. Dinkic told Reuters. "They have offered only 400-million for a 51% stake in NIS. Their property alone is worth 800-million according to conservative estimates, excluding business or market share."
Could it be that the Serb economy minister is not a traitor to his country at all, but is instead putting his own country's interests ahead of the interests of revanchist neo-Soviet imperialist Russia?
Russia is already Serbia's single largest trading partner with trade totaling euro2.62 billion in 2007, and the pipeline will likely boost this significantly when it becomes operational in 2013. That has raised concerns among pro-Western analysts and politicians in Serbia. They say that with the pipeline and oil company deals, Russia will be in control of Serbia's vital energy network, allowing it to exert political influence on the government simply by threatening to raise prices further. "There should be a difference between economic and political interests," Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic said. "Russia strongly supports our sovereignty (over Kosovo). But at the same time they also hiked the price of natural gas they sell us by 30 percent," Dinkic said. - LINKDeputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic and Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic both attacked Kostunica for his insistence that Belgrade keep on servicing Kosovo's $1.25 billion debt just to back up its legal case for sovereignty. "I cannot take part in a policy leading the nation to collective insanity," Dinkic told a television talk show. He said Kostunica's disregard of practical, bread-and-butter issues would cost Serbia dearly. "Is this taking Serbia forward, is this making Serbia stronger?" he asked. He compared Kostunica's intransigence to that of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, who led the country to a decade of war and isolation in the 1990s. "They seem to be competing who will be more disgusted with the West," Dinkic said. "This has got to stop. This behaviour is the height of irresponsibility." - LINK
Mladjan Dinkic, head of the G17 Plus Party, said money that would have gone to servicing the debt should instead be used to assist Serbs living in Kosovo. He rejected arguments from other members of the government that abjuring the debt would mean recognizing the breakaway region's unilateral declaration of independence, Blic reported. "The government is not unanimous on what to do with the debt," Dinkic said. "If we stop servicing it, that does not mean that we renounce our political claims on Serbian sovereignty. If we regain our sovereignty some day, we can continue repaying the debt." Debt service for Kosovo comes to about $150 million a year. Dinkic called repudiation "the only rational solution," saying it would give Serbia new resources without a tax increase. - LINK
WRT to the natural gas prices. Natural gas prices are generally commodity driven. Some years ago in the GOM they were 12 USD/mcf. Now they are 8 USD/mcf. Nobody can expect to buy crude oil nowadays for 50 dollars a Bbl unless you were lucky enough to lock in a long term contract. when the world price is 102 USD/Bbl. The same holds true for natural gas. So that statement was clearly a statement but misconstrued or twisted for propaganda purposes.
Damn. What happened to tailgunner Joe. It was Saturday night an I was ready for a good argument and he disappeared.
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