Posted on 05/17/2022 4:58:48 PM PDT by SpeedyInTexas
Days after taking office as Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister in December, Robert Habeck asked his most senior officials for a detailed assessment of his country’s dependence on Russian energy. The result shocked him.
The country heavily relied on Russian hydrocarbons to power vehicles and factories and heat homes, and there was no contingency plan to secure other supplies, Mr. Habeck said. The government had no viable alternative to Russian imports.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
With you on that, bro!
“The duration of the contract- Qatar wants the deal to be at least for 20 years. This could actually impact Germany’s ambitions to cut its carbon emissions by 88% by 2040”
And so goes Germany’s plan to have Cutter supply them with LNG. Seems that Cutter doesn’t want to spend the HUGE amount of money to build the facilities needed, just to have Green-Driven Germany say, in a few years: “Thanks for the gas, see you later”.
“Germany should sign long term contracts with US for new projects.”
They can sign them, but will Brandon actually allow the hydrocarbons to be produced for Germany? The planet is about to die from Global Warming, don’t you know.
It's sad that the natgas needed to fill the stolen Gazprom storage facilities is now being diverted to cover the gas cut off by Ukraine at the Sokhranivka switching point this Wednesday last...
“Actually I think it was the result of Russian payoffs to German politicians.”
Probably not, more like VERY CHEAP gas from Russia, especially compared to LNG, coupled with an arrogance that Russia would never do anything along the lines of invading Ukraine.
Exactly—all these problems go away if the “climate change” politicians take their personal carbon footprint to zero.
“No doubt there will be diffucult problems during this transition. But it has to be borne, as removing the dependency on Russia is an absolute strategic necessity.”
Europe’s choice, but I don’t see the necessity. Russia’s gas supply to Europe was (and still is) as reliable as ANY energy supply in history - far more reliable than the Middle East, for example.
Russia’s policy is that you pay for it, you get the gas. It’s the US and much of the West that plays games with other countries to advance their agenda.
Do you love the USA buying everything from China?
Too many globalists on this site who think it’s a good idea to send billions of dollars a year to our enemies.
“ Germany has the money. They can buy USA LNG and improve the USA trade balance.”
You must be a retired brain surgeon. You’re so smart!
Let’s send them all our gas so we can double and triple our gas bills!!
“Do you love the USA buying everything from China? Too many globalists on this site who think it’s a good idea to send billions of dollars a year to our enemies.”
The problem was and is our labor unions (primarily), but Global Warming and other regulations are making a run at it.
Without fixing those problems, we are either a desperately poor country, or dependent on other countries - maybe China, or maybe other other low-cost countries.
We should have NEVER permitted things to get so bad domestically, but here we are.
In addition to the floating LNG terminals, two permanent LNG terminal projects, one in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven and one in Brunsbuettel near Hamburg are now on track within the next two years.
Just those two will have about 1/3 of the capacity of what Germany imported from Russia before the war.
“Let’s send them all our gas so we can double and triple our gas bills”
We probably flare more gas than we export.
FR won’t accept the archive article as the source for posting. Got error and then changed to original WSJ article.
Reliability depends on a lot of things.
In re nat gas (or coal), a secure supply is vital. This stuff is used for a large number of purposes that will not tolerate outages. Therefore to ensure reliable supplies a number of factors apply. One of these is that wonderful catchall, “political risk”.
Lets look at how California arranged their nat gas supply, set up back when California was forward looking, conservative and rational. There are three main pipelines transporting gas, from three different sources - Western Canada, the Rocky Mountain Basin (mainly Montana), and Texas-Oklahoma, all feeding an in-State transmission system. Three independent sources, three pathways. California is thus highly protected from any number of physical or circumstantial threats, including political threats.
It is very much a stretch to imagine that Montana will turn hostile to California over some war of words over cultural disputes, or that Nevada, through which one pipeline goes, will escalate a taxation argument, but that too is accounted for.
Unfortunately Russia is not a US state vis-a-vis Germany, so there always was a large political risk. That single source of gas was always available for blackmail in any potential dispute, as Russia and Germany could always, were very likely to, develop severely divergent interests. Trump pressed that point with the German leadership in 2017, and he was laughed at. Nobody is laughing now.
Germany failed to do basic utility planning, and laughed at all sorts of single source risks.
Did you work in the industry? It is going to take 10-12 years and $1,5 trillion to develop enough capacity to receive LNG which costs a lot. It won’t solve the problem of not enough sources though. Nobody wants to invest on top of that because Germany wants to convert from gas to green energy before the investment returns.
The ideal for Germany was not any sort of natural gas, but nuclear or coal. These were entirely in-country under German state control. Natural gas would in any case be an imported fuel. There are some uses for nat gas that are actually hard to substitute, but the volume needed for that sort of use is a small fraction of what they ended up using for electric generation and heating.
Both of those are as cheap or cheaper, for electric generation, than nat gas. But of course politics, popular hysteria over meaningless risks, more politics, bribery, more hysteria, and there they are.
I find it rather laughable that in response to all the games Russia sanctioned its current German importers of natgas.
It means that the new companies need to be established and new contracts concluded. I am sure that there won’t be $300 per tcm prices in them anymore, but closer to the current spot prices of $1000+. The Germans are going to overpay enough in a few months to finance a couple of new pipelines from Russia to Asia. Then they can convert Germany to unicorn farts.
Then RuZZia doesnt have anything to worry about? Right?
Oh ye, with greens in control they are absolutely going to do it.../s
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