Posted on 02/03/2023 9:40:12 PM PST by Cronos
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, gleefully predicted that Europeans would be “freezing in their homes” because they hadn’t thought through the consequences of throwing their support behind Ukraine. “The cold is coming soon,” he said, menacingly, in June last year.
But as the European Union enters the last month of the meteorological winter in 2023, signs are becoming clearer that its members have weathered an historic crisis – and not just because “General Frost” has proved a milder adversary than Medvedev predicted.
Within eight months of Russian troops setting foot on Ukrainian soil, the bloc of 27 European states replaced about 80% of the natural gas it used to draw through pipelines with Russia, by rapidly building up new infrastructure for liquid natural gas, finding creative ways to help each other out amid shortages, and successfully pursuing energy-saving policies.
...Gas spot prices dropped to about €55 a megawatt hour (MWh) on Monday, a level last seen before the start of the war in September 2021, down from €330/MWh at the end of last August.
...Germany, always destined to bear the brunt of Putin’s gas blackmail effort due to its high reliance on energy exports from Russia, managed to use 14% less gas in 2022 than it had done on average in the years from 2018 to 2021. It enters February with its gas storage tanks 80% full, compared with 36% at this point last year.
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(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
And how is the German economy and manufacturing sector doing? And by the way, there has been no Russian gas cut off. But there was a US/Brit/Pole attack on Nordstream I and II. There was a German refusal to pay. There was a German participation in in the seizure of Russian gold and currency. Krauts gleefully voted to cut Russia off Swift.
And then Germany decides Russia has blackmailed you.
NG went from around 10 pr square ft of NG to less than 3.
Russia is selling to others on the cheap, lol.
Putin never imagined that EU leaders would LOVE to see their population suffer in service of their hair-shirt green ideology.
No one in DC our our corrupt media mentions that TO THIS DAY, Russia still supplies 30% of the enriched uranium used by US nuclear power plants. The USA simply does NOT have the existing capacity to replace that Russian enriched uranium. How's that for wisdom on the part of US planners?
Anyway, Russia has said, they will NOT cut the USA off, regardless of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
They intend to prove to the rest of the world, ordering nuclear plants, using Russian nuclear designs and fuel that they are a reliable supplier in all cases.
Nothing to do with greens.
I predicted this @7 months ago BTW, and again after the destruction of Nordstream.
There would be no freezing in the dark in Europe.
They would find a range of workarounds.
And so it came to pass.
Honor me for my gift of prophecy!
Russia is still selling off the fissile material from its decommissioned Cold War nukes.
Its bucks for Russia, at US expense BTW.
By doing that the US lost much of its Uranium mining and enrichment industry.
It was seen as a fair price for getting rid of the nukes.
Sector results due Feb 24.
Feb. 24th ... the one-year anniversary of Russia invading
The EU imposed nine sanctions packages against Russia. They got what they wished for.
************
Sanctions are stupid and counter productive to the commercial operations, that create the material wealth that benefit global consumers. They also are a road block to maintaining our current level of civilization.
The United States, United Kingdom, & European Union have chosen their path.
It’s a path full of economic briars, brambles, and barbed wire, but the stubborn blockheads look like they want to “stay the course.”
The hogwash is amusing.
The article is useless without mentioning that all of the above did cost the EU in the excess of $1 trillion and going to cost more in future.
Russia is developing new markets as we speak.
For a buck fifty lmao.
Probably. There is a cost to anything. But what Russia has to sell, “energy”, in general, is eminently substitutable and it is only a matter of time - as in this case, less than a year - before workarounds come.
There is a lot of petroleum, and even more nat gas in the world.
Thats why OPEC was powerful for only a short while, before petroleum markets were forced into a decade long slump.
The hardest things to substitute are markets. It’s the demand side that matters.
Probably. There is a cost to anything. But what Russia has to sell, “energy”, in general, is eminently substitutable and it is only a matter of time - as in this case, less than a year - before workarounds come.
There is a lot of petroleum, and even more nat gas in the world.
Thats why OPEC was powerful for only a short while, before petroleum markets were forced into a decade long slump.
"Within eight months of Russian troops setting foot on Ukrainian soil, the bloc of 27 European states replaced about 80% of the natural gas it used to draw through pipelines with Russia..."That new infrastructure and energy trade agreements are not go away when the war ends. The fact is, the US, Europe and the world are adapting and working to restrict, not stop, Russia's revenues and it is working Russia is cutting down on its oil and gas production this year. They can't sell what they can't produce.
Which helps explain all the Russian shill's fear mongering over the 500,000 to 700,000 Russian soldiers about to invade Ukraine. When ignoring the fact Russia cannot support another invasion using 2.5 to 3.5 times as many soldiers as it can supply.
As Russia is gradually running out of money and means to run the war, Europe is increasingly calling Russia's bluff.
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Russia has limited options for “new” markets.
1. The biggest export by far is petroleum and petroleum products. Russia is already selling all it can without restriction, because this a commodity. Indeed, due to the price caps its probably selling more! But there is only so much petroleum demand in the world, and there is a lot of petroleum around.
2. Piped natural gas (#2 export) is the worst problem. You need pipelines to reach alternate markets. Russia already has pipelines to reach all potential markets in reach, westward. China is already served by pipelines from Eastern Siberia, which is sourced from an entirely separate set of gas basins than that which is servicing western customers. These sources are very distant from each other, and there is no connection between the two. Russia and China could, and are, fairly slowly, developing that Eastern trade, but it is not enhanced by extra gas from the west that Russia cannot sell. China isnt a substitute for western markets.
This only addresses sales to the EU. Russia has sought and succeeded in gaining clients in other countries.
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