The ‘natural gas islands’ are simply the solution to ports being built to allow gas-tanker-ships to enter and ‘dump’ their cargo. Virtually every nation in Europe is hyper about allowing such ports to be modified to built for this....by legal means, the various Green Parties can turn this into a 20-year delay.
So what some nations have done (to a small extent) is create a floating dock...maybe five miles off the coast....maybe even further out, and then run a pipe to the shore. The ship arrives....off-loads the natural gas, and then leaves to return to the US.
The link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/europe-will-import-more-us-natural-gas-trump-and-juncker-say.html
My impression is that the Russians were set to make a fair amount of money off their deal (pipes already being built). So now, if the port or island deal occurs with the US-EU, then there’s competition and Russia probably makes less money (it’s probably not a terrible loss).
Note on this Russian pipe....it’s going through the Baltic Sea and avoiding any connection to the Middle East. By using the sea, they aren’t paying anyone for permission to allow the pipe to be there. You will see less and less natural gas pumped via Ukraine in the end.
Thanks. I figured it was something like that, but had not seen any good write up.
It certainly makes sense that Russia would like to avoid pumping gas through Ukraine.
The proposed Iranian-Russian pipeline through Syria is one root of the Syria situation of course. I’d guess Assad would need considerable assistance from Iran and Russia to keep it secure.