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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
There is no chance Germany will attack Russia.
The next OPEC+ meeting Oct 5 should be interesting. Russia is said to be asking for 1 million barrel/day production cut. We'll see what level of support exists for Russia. Of course OPEC+ isn't happy with Biden's SPR release so they wouldn't mind seeing the US get squeezed when refilling capacity.
But what kind of an "ally" considering what they did the next day...
EDIT: And we are talking about the actual Nazi Germany here...
Source:
Yes it was.
That's up in the air but if the US and UK can remain healthy democracies and stay close the energy to become a healthy, stable democracy is there.
Germany doesn't have the ability even if they wanted to.
petit_bateau
Active Member
Thanks @GWord . I too have operated O&G pipelines and managed gas contracts. That force majeure invocation is exactly what I suggested in my earlier list Russia/Ukraine conflict .
My personal suspicion is that the failure by Gazprom to supply the contracted amounts via NS1, and Gazprom's refusal to use the significant ullage available in the alternative pipeline paths, exposes Gazprom to large enough losses that it would ultimately cause Gazprom (and all the other Russian gascos) to go bankrupt. Therefore blowing up ones own pipeline to throw an extra years legal wrangling into the works is worth it. Especially when such a move has all the other effects I listed.
Another aspect to watch out for is that the unavailability of NS1 and NS2 bring into doubt the longer term viability of all of the assciated feeder oil & gas fields in Russia. Short term Russia is just flaring (or venting) so as to be able to ship the oil/condensate for cash. That cannot go on forever, even in Nigeria such levels of flaring are frowned upon. I cannot envisage anyone investing in Russia to do either gas reinjection or to build a captive fertiliser plant, indeed it was the reluctance to do this that led to NS1 and NS2 being built in the first place. Ultimately the introduction of CBAM mechanisms will make flaring economically non-viable but that will take a good few years to come to fruition. It will not be possible for Russia to build the necessary pipelines to swing the NS1/2 fields to Asian markets - it would take about a decade for that to happen. So my expectation is that those fields will receive no further investment and ultimately be prematurely abandoned as producers. Basically Russia will go bust as a consequence one way or another now.
Actually Russia has not pressed all the buttons to switch 'off' all the gas*. If you pay careful attention Russia has continued to use some (but by no meas all) of the capacity in some of the other pipeline systems so as to supply their client states. Notably these are Hungary, Transnystria, Serbia, and to a lesser extent Italy. What is more all the other states, including Ukraine, through which these pipelines pass have continued to allow free flow of that gas, even when they have blocked taking off other gas for example for themselves. This is so as to comply with UN/EU/etc rules that apply to all countries that are not in a declared state of war. And there is - so far - no declared state of war. The legalities are crucial as the lawfare is just as important as the military fight, the economic fight, and the media fight.
* At least that was the case until yesterday when Gazprom announced another escalation in contractual litigation was occurring wrt a arbitration process re gas pipeline tariffs etc with Ukraine.
Gas prices rise in Europe as fears grow Russia may halt supplies via Ukraine
Threat of sanctions from Gazprom adds to turmoil caused by damage to Nord Stream pipelines in Baltic Sea
www.theguardian.com
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For those of you talking about Russian nuclear weapons and what the START treaties allow the West to verify I think you have an unrealistic understanding of the level of access available under the START / INF / etc treaties. The ispectors are able to observe to the level of the re-entry vehicle shell. They are not able to look within the RV to examine the physics package within for somewhat obvious reasons (the physics package is the nuclear warhead itself). Similarly they are not able to examine the internals of the 'rocket' that carries the rentry vehicle. So the inspectors are able to (say) hold a Geiger counter up to a device to confirm it is radioactive, but they are not able to open up the device to determine (for example) whether the tritium booster canister (etc) is depleted. Now we all know that a good observor will pick up a lot of information just by being in a facility with a keen pair of eyes, but at face value all the inspection process allows one to do is to verify that X amount of warheads exist in Y places, of which A fraction are mated to launch vehicles and B fraction are not mated, etc. As a result, under the precautionary principle, the relevant Western militaries work on the basis that all those Russian weapons are viable. That may be somewhat conservative stance but this is not something to get relaxed about.
New START Treaty Inspection Activities - United States Department of State
What is the difference between a “Type One” and a “Type Two” inspection? The New START Treaty provides for 18 on-site inspections per year. There are two basic types of inspections. Type One inspections focus on sites with deployed and non-deployed strategic systems; Type Two inspections focus...
www.state.gov
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Everyone needs to keep a very close eye on Hungary and its attempts to act as a Russian proxy in blocking the EU's eighth sanction package, this is currently ongoing.
Tiger
Active Member
Finland has finally closed the border for Russians. You can no longer cross with a tourist visa. It was closed last night.
The German procurement system is a byzantine mess. It's probably the most dysfunctional in the world. The German defense industry makes some great equipment but the German military struggles to keep what it has operational and the system for new procurement is so complicated they end up buying very little. Perun goes into all the details in the video I linked earlier. It's unbelievably bad.
According to this article, German helicopter readiness is around 15%.
Is Germany's Military Dying?
They probably couldn't take on Lithuania right now.
lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
Are the recent losses in Oligarchs around the world and at home directly related to the gas industry within Russia?
Not really. A. Multinational multiethnic philosophy based somewhere is vastly different than is a theocratic monocultural empire based in the same place.
The former can and does change but inevitably fails into separate parts.
The latter is more brittle and fails with more dramatic and catastrophic consequence.
China and Russia are both ruled by a single dominant ethnic group with minorities subjugated.
Only Putin’s Russia has a single ethnicity and a single State-supported religion that is built on single ethnic divine right.
Religious movements can and do grow quickly and demean non-coreligionists.
When a theocracy survives only by large numbers of non-adherents in military forces it weakens itself.
That is happening right now in Russia. Not too many people note which ethnicities are among the largest emigrants now. After all ‘they all look alike’
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Putin's having his 'event'. Unfortunately, YT auto-translate is not being much help as usual, but I'm getting the gist of it...
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Meanwhile, Lyman appears to be surrounded and all but lost for Russia.
How much physical control can Ukraine take back before winter, everything but Crimea?
That wouldn't be a bad setup for a winter long standoff, right?
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/63S7PPGOZJLMTCQQCPRPYOC544.jpg)
www.reuters.com
How much physical control can Ukraine take back before winter, everything but Crimea?
That wouldn't be a bad setup for a winter long standoff, right?
Ukraine tells Russia to appeal if it wants imperilled troops freed
Ukraine said on Friday it had all the supply routes to the Russian stronghold of Lyman in the crosshairs of its artillery in the east, and told Moscow it would have to appeal to Kyiv if it wanted its forces to be allowed out.
www.reuters.com
petit_bateau
Active Member
UA claims Yampil takenMeanwhile, Lyman appears to be surrounded and all but lost for Russia.
How much physical control can Ukraine take back before winter, everything but Crimea?
That wouldn't be a bad setup for a winter long standoff, right?
Ukraine tells Russia to appeal if it wants imperilled troops freed
Ukraine said on Friday it had all the supply routes to the Russian stronghold of Lyman in the crosshairs of its artillery in the east, and told Moscow it would have to appeal to Kyiv if it wanted its forces to be allowed out.
So that is the door not quite closed, but very nearly so
petit_bateau
Active Member
Although it seems quite a lot of Russian stuff is heading eastwards out of Lyman through the gap in the door via Zarichne, the timestamp on this is within the last few hours. The UKR may be claiming to have "fire control" of that road, but they don't seem to be using it judging by these convoys. I wonder if their next logical stop is Kremina ?
Another possibility that I have not seen discussed: it removes a bargaining chip from individuals or cliques within Russia who may be inclined to supplant Putin. An aspiring coup-leader cannot now simply "press a button" to restore gas to Europe and win concessions in hypothetical negotiations. Putin burning the ships behind him, if you will.
But this bargaining chip is Russia's influence and power over the EU. If the EU finds this winter unbearable with actual citizens dying, they may encourage Ukraine to start negotiating. Now with pipelines destroyed, any thoughts of that disappears. I don't think Putin's end plan is to have EU NOT rely on them for energy because strategically that's just stupid. Didn't he already say gas will be turned on if sanctions disappear?
So far I see gains from the following countries with the pipelines destroyed
1. Ukraine: It lowers Russia influence on the EU
2. China: now can get cheap gas indefinitely
3. US: Continues high exports of LNG to EU at high prices
4. Russia?: bunch of convoluted reasons people are making up as if it's some kind of 4D chess move that only a destroyed pipeline seems to provide....
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X Fan
Active Member
A few counterpoints,
I hesitate to even entertain the James Bond-ish conspiracy theory that a US entity would attack EU infrastructure, but in terms of Option 3 above, Asia is the price maker for US LNG, not Europe. The European import market has had to rise to compete with Asian pricing for the 10% to 20% of replacement volumes needed to make up for RU gas curtailment. Also, most of the US LNG infrastructure apparatus is contracted under fixed or indexed price, take or pay contracting, meaning that they are generally indifferent to cargo destination. The companies marketing the cargoes stand to benefit from short term price volatility but I deal with these guys in a professional sense regularly and they're just average white collar folks, no more likely to mastermind a multinational, subsea, tactical bombing caper than your Starbucks barista.
Option 2, there's not enough far east gas transport capacity from RU to China for Nord Stream bound production to materially influence that market. China can only import about 10% of its domestic gas needs via RU exports without multiyear construction of new infrastructure.
Option 4, I might characterize this a bit different. To me most of the RU reasons are simple, thuggish and tragically unsophisticated. That's why I feel like they have an air of probability.
I just don't think Putin much cares what happens to Russia if he is no longer in charge. I'm just floating the idea that regime preservation is one possible strong incentive for doing something like this. That's not exactly 4-D chess - it's just self-preservation.
I certainly agree that there are clear benefits to other states.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Ha ha ha.
Really.
Operationally, it is identical.
One searches for useful idiots on the Left. The other on the Right.
