Posted on 03/27/2025 8:51:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Donald Trump is holding a gun to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding huge reparations payments and laying claim to half of Ukraine’s oil, gas, and hydrocarbon resources as well as almost all its metals and much of its infrastructure.
The latest version of his “minerals deal”, obtained by The Telegraph, is unprecedented in the history of modern diplomacy and state relations.
“It is an expropriation document,” said Alan Riley, an expert on energy law at the Atlantic Council. “There are no guarantees, no defence clauses, the US puts up nothing.
“The Americans can walk away, the Ukrainians can’t. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
The text leaves little doubt that Mr Trump’s chief objective is to incorporate Ukraine as a province of America’s oil, gas and resource industries.
It dovetails with parallel talks between the US and Russia for a comprehensive energy partnership, including plans to restore West Siberian gas flows to Europe in large volumes, with US companies and Trump-aligned financiers gaining a major stake in the business.
The revived gas trade would flow through Ukraine’s network, and later via the Baltic as the sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines are brought back on stream.
The new draft states that the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund will control Ukraine’s “critical minerals or other minerals, oil, natural gas (including liquified [sic] natural gas), fuels or other hydrocarbons and other extractable materials”.
All critical materials listed in the US Energy Act are covered, including both rare earths and 50 other minerals such as lithium, titanium, cobalt, aluminium and zinc.
The US will control infrastructure linked to natural resources “including, but not limited to, roads, rail, pipelines and other transportation assets; ports, terminals and other logistics facilities and refineries, processing facilities, natural gas liquefaction and/or regasification facilities and similar assets”.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
It’s tough to be a pawn trapped between two heavy pieces. So it goes.
Ambrose talks as if this is something important.
Ukraine chose destruction and slavery based on obviously fake promises of joining NATO. They should have agreed to what was offered before.
Ambrose quoting the Atlantic Council
Its like Moe quoting Curly.
RE: They should have agreed to what was offered before.
Can you remind us what was offered before?
Back in 1998, we thought Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was the real deal.
Turns out he’s a gas bag.
Sounds to me like the deal is getting worse and worse the more Zelensky continues to play games.
The greedy little egomaniac Uke is dead in the water now.
He should have taken the deal before he lost more land.
SAF: Did you think he didn’t know what was offered before?
One more time.
There is no evidence whatsoever that there is any quantity of crude oil in Ukraine or even offshore Ukraine of any significance at all. BP keeps a running tally of each country’s reserves of oil and gas, and it’s consumption of both. The BP spreadsheet for Ukraine’s oil says zero.
They do have some gas. It’s listed as 1.1 trillion cubic meters. Whenever people see the word trillion they think that it’s a ginormous amount. It’s not. Russia is the number one reserves and dominant natural gas on the planet and theirs is about 47 trillion cubic meters.
The United States consumes 1.1 trillion cubic meters each year.
Other countries consume less so they could claim that Ukraine has more than one year worth of gas for them. But when it’s gone it’s gone in Ukraine simply does not have much. It’s in the Northeast area of the country and it is flowing.
Bottom line, the minerals deal was manufactured by the British and the American pro Ukraine factions that were desperate to convolute the situation and try desperately to erode what is clearly an opposition to further involvement by Trump.
When did Ukraine un-restore Putin’s gas empire?
* * *
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/qa-russian-gas-transit-through-ukraine/
Q&A | Russian Gas Transit through Ukraine
Blog by Akos Losz • October 3, 2023
Despite the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine that began in February 2022, Russian gas transit to Europe through Ukraine continues to this day at a rate of 35–40 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d). . .
* * *
Naftogaz ex-chief criticizes Russian oil transit in Ukraine
January 16, 2025, 07:54 AM
Maybe ask Olaf Scholz.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/scholz-says-no-technical-reasons-reduced-gas-flows-russia
03 Aug 2022, 13:37 Benjamin Wehrmann
Scholz says “no technical reasons” for reduced gas flows from Russia
https://www.dw.com/en/is-germany-still-importing-russian-gas/a-70813419
Is Germany still importing Russian gas?
Dirk Kaufmann
11/19/2024November 19, 2024
Germany reportedly told an LNG terminal operator to reject a Russian LNG shipment, affirming its policy to not directly import Russian gas. But that’s not the whole story.
. . .Zukunft Gas spokesman Charlie Grüneberg told DW that the transit of Russian gas through EU terminals will likely end in March 2025 under a new EU sanctions package against Russia — the bloc’s 14th — agreed upon in July this year.
“The package also includes new restrictions on Russian LNG. It will prohibit the transfer of Russian LNG in European ports for onward shipment to non-EU third countries,” Grüneberg said. “Beyond that,” he added, “there are no general EU sanctions against Russian gas.”
So far, it remains unclear whether German LNG ports have accepted shipments of Russian gas despite the country’s import ban.
Or maybe Evans-Pritchard could ask Keir Starmer.
UK ‘helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine’ via loophole on refined oil imports
This article is more than 10 months old
£2.2bn-worth of oil processed in China, India and Turkey – to whom Russia supplies crude – was imported in 2023, data shows
Sam Bright
Wed 24 Apr 2024 05.00 EDT
UK strikes energy deal with firm linked to Putin’s gas exports
March 18, 2024 8:00 pm CET
By Charlie Cooper
LONDON — U.K. hospitals, town halls and government departments will be heated via a massive energy deal with a subsidiary of a firm still importing Russian gas to Europe — just days after U.K. ministers boasted they were “driving Putin out of the market.”
The National Health Service (NHS) is among several British public sector bodies set to benefit from a four-year gas supply contract, worth up to £8 billion, agreed last year between the U.K. government and TotalEnergies Gas and Power.
The company is a subsidiary of the French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies which, two years after Russia rolled its tanks into Ukraine, continues to be a major importer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) into Europe. . .
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