Guest “The answers are: Not much and because” by David Middleton
With the criminal Soviet invasion of Ukraine, the subject of US oil imports from Russia has popped up in the news quite a few times over the past week or so. As a petroleum geologist, I cringe whenever the media discusses almost anything related to oil & gas production. This is particularly true for political commentators on both sides of the political spectrum.
There seems to be some fairly common media misconceptions regarding this subject:
- The importation of Russian oil is a recent development.
- The volume of imported Russian oil is massive.
- The US is dependent on Russian oil.
- Greenlighting the Keystone XL pipeline would eliminate these imports.
- Resuming oil & gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico would eliminate these imports.
- Accelerating the energy “transition” to green schist would eliminate these imports (See Ron White)
- Biden caused this problem.
Starting with point #7, Biden didn’t cause this problem. However, everything he has done has made it worse and everything his maladministration is proposing to do, will make it yet even worse.
How Much Oil Does the US Import From Russia?
The volume of imported Russian oil varies widely on a monthly basis.
In June 2021, the US imported a record average of 844,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) from Russia.
Prior to 2002, the US imported less than 100,000 bbl/d from Russia. Since 2005, the US has imported 300,000 to 600,000 bbl/d from Russia,
While 300,000 to 600,000 bbl/d sounds like a lot…
It’s really just a drop in the bucket barrel. In December 2021, total US crude oil and refined product imports averaged a bit over 8.5 million bbl/d, only about 400,000 bbl/d came from Russia.
Crude Oil vs Petroleum Products
FEBRUARY 18, 2022
EIA expects U.S. petroleum trade to shift toward net imports during 2022Following its historic shift to being a net exporter of petroleum in 2020, the United States continued to export more petroleum (which includes crude oil, refined petroleum products, and other liquids) than it imported in 2021. According to our February 2022 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we expect net crude oil imports to increase, making the United States a net importer of petroleum in 2022.
A country is a net importer if it imports more of a commodity than it exports. Conversely, a country is a net exporter if it exports more of a commodity than it imports. Many factors affect net trade numbers because trade reflects supply and demand conditions both domestically and internationally.
Historically, the United States has been a net importer of petroleum. During 2020, COVID-19 mitigation efforts caused a drop in oil demand within the United States and internationally. International petroleum prices decreased in response to less consumption, which diminished incentives for key petroleum-exporting countries to increase production. This shift allowed the United States to export more petroleum in 2020 than it had in the past.
Also in 2020, the difference between U.S. crude oil imports and exports fell to its lowest point since at least 1985. Net crude oil imports subsequently rose by 19% in 2021 to an average of 3.2 million barrels per day (b/d) as crude oil consumption increased in response to rising economic activity. We forecast that the United States will continue to import more crude oil than it exports in 2022, reaching an estimated annual average of 3.9 million b/d. However, we expect net imports to fall to 3.4 million b/d in 2023 as domestic crude oil production increases to an all-time high of 12.6 million b/d.
Since 2010, the United States has exported more refined petroleum products, including distillate fuel oil, hydrocarbon gas liquids, and motor gasoline, among others, than it has imported. Net exports of refined petroleum products grew to 3.3 million b/d in 2020 and remained about the same in 2021. We expect petroleum product net exports will reach new highs of 3.6 million b/d in 2022 and 3.8 million b/d in 2023.
Principal contributor: Ornella Kaze
Tags: exports/imports, liquid fuels, crude oil, oil/petroleum, petroleum products
EIA
The US has been a net importer of crude oil for a long time. In 2010, the US became a net exporter of refined petroleum products. In 2020, the US became a net exporter of crude oil plus refined petroleum products. EIA anticipates that we will shift back to a net importer this year.
Most of our Russian imports consist of (sort of) refined petroleum products.
The vast majority of the refined petroleum product imports consist of “unfinished oils.”
| Unfinished Oils | All oils requiring further processing, except those requiring only mechanical blending. Unfinished oils are produced by partial refining of crude oil and include naphthas and lighter oils, kerosene and light gas oils, heavy gas oils, and residuum. |
Why Does the US Import Oil From Russia?
The short answer is that crude oil and refined petroleum products are globally traded commodities, the US consumes about 4 million bbl/d of crude oil more than it produces and Russia produces about 5 million bbl/d of crude oil more than it consumes. Even though, the US receives only a tiny fraction of exported Russian crude oil, the material balance calculation is global.
Note: OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. EIA
The long answer is that US refinery demands match up with Russian supplies in an interesting way.
Why do we import from Russia?
U.S. West Coast (USWC) refineries rely on imports of light sweet crude oil from other countries, including Russia, because access to U.S. produced light sweet crude oil is challenged by geography, transportation and logistics.
Our refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) import heavier crude and unfinished oils from Russia that our complex refineries can transform into other products including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Gasoline and diesel represent only a small part of Russian imports to the United States, largely going to the East Coast. The U.S. East Coast is reliant on foreign sources of refined product due to lack of local refining capacity and infrastructure to economically move products from refining centers along the USGC to markets along the eastern seaboard.
Why have Russian imports increased?
In 2021, increased Russian imports to refineries in California and Washington state have helped offset lower volumes of light sweet crude imports into California from other countries—notably Nigeria—and lower volumes of U.S.-produced crude oil shipped by rail to Washington.
Increased imports of crude oil to the USGC region in 2021 were largely driven by disruptions to U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil production caused by Hurricane Ida and have since declined.
And, since 2019, U.S. refineries have increased imports of unfinished heavy oils from Russia to help replace heavy sour crude from Venezuela that U.S. refineries can no longer import.
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers
West coast refineries (who knew there were any?) import light sweet crude from Russia and other countries because there is a lack of pipeline capacity to deliver enough domestically produced oil to the region. Gulf Coast refineries import some heavier Russian crude to offset Venezuelan imports that are no longer available.
Keystone XL Pipeline
On Day One of his miserable maladministration, Brandon cancelled the permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline and halted its construction. This pipeline would have been able to deliver over 800,000 bbl/d to US refineries in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions.
A year before Brandon idiotically cancelled the pipeline, TransCanada had already secured commitments from oil producers for 500,000 bbl/d for up to 20 years. This would have offset much of the crude oil we import from outside of North America.
Reversing Brandon’s moronic decision today, wouldn’t eliminate the need to import Russian oil. However, we would be one year closer to completion of the pipeline, without that moronic decision. For that matter, had the Obama maladministration not also moronically blocked its construction, it would probably already be completed.
In Nov. 2015, President Barack Obama announced his administration would not grant permits for the construction of this pipeline in order to further their commitment to fighting climate change.6 In his first week at the Oval Office, President Trump signed an executive order clearing the way for the pipeline project.7 The Republican party had believed that the construction of the pipeline will create more jobs and provide a boost to the economy. On Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden rescinded the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. TC Energy said it was stopping construction earlier the same day.3
Investopedia
Gulf of Mexico Leasing
While Brandon’s even more moronic (and unlawful) refusal to hold Gulf of Mexico lease sales, hasn’t significantly impacted US oil production yet, within a decade, it will likely lead to the US having to import an additional 1 million bbl/d of crude oil.
Conclusion
Regarding the Soviet Union’s Criminal War of Aggression Against Ukraine…
I wrote this two months ago:
If Putin seriously wants to seize Ukraine, this winter will probably be his best opportunity. With the US saddled with a dementia-ridden “president” and even less competent “vice president,” and a Congress controlled by left-wing zealots for at least the next 12 months, coupled with Putin’s ability to turn off Europe’s supply of natural gas on a whim, he is literally in the “catbird seat.” (Yes, I know I just wrote that Putin is literally in an idiomatic phrase.) That said, why would Putin risk triggering World War III? It’s not that there’s a long history of perceived weakness among Western democracies triggering wars in the past…
[…]
While I seriously doubt that the two nations who suffered most horribly during World War II would intentionally start World War III, why does this remind me of the 1930’s? Substitute Russia for Nazi Germany and Red China for Imperial Japan, toss in a healthy dose of western weakness… and the similarities are eerie.
“Renewable Energy Dogmatism” – The New Red Menace?
Needless to say, Jen “Circle Back” Psaki thinks doubling down on stupid is the answer to Russian oil imports…
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. needs to decrease its reliance on foreign oil by switching over to renewable energy, not increasing domestic production.
Fox News
“Russian warship, go f*** yourself”
The defiant soldiers of Snake Island are actually ‘alive and well,’ says Ukraine’s navy
By Sebastian Shukla and Lianne Kolirin, CNN
Updated 3:06 PM Thu EST, Mon February 28, 2022CNN — The Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island – who were all feared dead after their defiant response to threats from a Russian warship – are actually “alive and well,” according to the Ukrainian Navy.
All of the soldiers on the tiny island in the Black Sea were thought to have been killed in an attack on the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last Thursday.
According to a purported audio exchange, one of the Ukrainian troops had responded to a warning from an approaching Russian vessel to lay down their weapons or face bombing by saying, “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.”
[…]
According to the navy the soldiers on the island repelled two attacks by Russian forces but in the end were forced to surrender “due to the lack of ammunition.”
The statement added that Russian attackers have completely destroyed the island’s infrastructure, including lighthouses, towers and antennas.
Russian state media also showed the arrival of the Ukrainian soldiers in Sevastopol, Crimea where they are being held.
[…]
CNN
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mco/5MRF74JOKBAP7NJPW6I24NCY74.jfif)
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride”
Live updates: Zelenskyy declines US offer to evacuate Kyiv
By The Associated Press
February 25, 2022KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked to evacuate Kyiv at the behest of the U.S. government but turned down the offer.
Zelenskyy said in response: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” according to a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation, who described Zelenskyy as upbeat.
[…]
AP
Reminds me of General George Patton on the relief of Bastogne…
Bastogne remained surrounded, and when the Germans demanded its surrender, the acting commander of the 101st Airborne, Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, replied, “Nuts!” Upon hearing the now-famous response Patton said: “Any man who is that eloquent deserves to be relieved. We shall go right away.”
On Christmas Eve Patton judged that “the German General Staff is running this attack and has staked all on this offensive to regain the initiative. They are far behind schedule and, I believe beaten. If this is true, the whole army may surrender.”
PATTON’S FINEST HOUR
The brave and eloquent defenders of Ukraine deserve to be relieved.
If not for the November 2020 coup d’état…
62 percent of voters say Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president: poll
BY CAROLINE VAKIL – 02/25/22A majority of American voters say that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine had former President Trump still been in office, according to a new survey released on Friday.
A new Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)-Harris Poll survey released Friday found that 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president. When looking strictly at the answers of Democrats and Republicans, 85 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats answered this way.
[…]
The Hill
This is a long documentary, but very incite full on why Russia wants Ukraine. Also, I had no idea Ukraine had as much oil and gas.
https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE
just imagine if Ukraine was at net zero with easy to strafe wind and solar “farms”
The stalled Russian Convoy would be easy to strafe, where’s a few A10s when you need them
You watch MSNBC? Trashy channel. But, the Ukrainians are using Turkish drones to hit those convoys- the problem is they don’t have many.
Read on Al Jazeera that more were coming. As I understand it, they are blasting fuel tank trucks and other lightly armored vehicles. Smart use of the weapon system, tanks are just stationary artillery if they do not have enough fuel to move.
Turkey has just delivered more to Ukraine.
As well as that documentary , here is an article by Schellenberger which gives a good insight about the reasons for the attack . https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-wests-green-delusions-empowered?s=r
A clear and succinct article. I doubt any alarmist academic will analyse his main points but only launch personal attacks.
That was good. Thanks.
In the documentary I linked Ukraine has undeveloped gas and oil. What if Ukraine were to develop those resources and supply Europe?
I think the is the big reason Russia made its move.
Arab Spring -> Libyan coup.
Slavic Spring -> Ukranian coup.
Obama, Biden, McCain, Biden’s wars from Tripoli to Kiev. Nobel Pieces.
Global war against climate, lately followed by a two year devastating global war against a novel virus.
UN EU warmongering at the finest.
Clearly a total failure on stopping, blocking or even hindering at the slightest the full and total global invasion from a virus.
The very playbook of cold blooded heartless warmongers in charge of human affairs.
Simply causing more and more unnecessary misery and unnecessary hardship.
Even to the point that some silly hot heads can not refrain from blaming everything on a virus.
cheers
n.n
It, really is painful,… n.n!!!
Don Omar – Virtual Diva
As part of the EU, Ukraine will be forced to adopt “net-zero, leave it in the ground”, and put up solar panels, which may be covered with snow, and wind turbines, which only work if there is wind.
Ukraine will have a great future, because it will get at least $10 to $20 billion per year, which is an enormous amount in a peanut economy. That likely will disappear into the pockets of the OLIGARCHS
All money sent to Ukraine has been stolen. Obama was pumping large sums of taxpayer money into Ukraine.
Crime and reward, in the end of the day means, basically “rightfully” so;
that nothing was ever actually stolen, but simply transferred… legitimately, under the widely accepted rule(s) of the criminal hospice “art”.
cheers
Do you know who stole it? If not, how can you be certain it was stolen?
I have already read about this, foreign aid has become the latest method to launder tax dollars, because the recipients of the U. S. State Department’s largess do not have to provide an accounting of how they spent it. So, the Obama State Department sends a billion dollars to Ukraine, the government employees skim off their share and pass the rest on to the oligarchs who skim off their share and pass the remainder onto the industries said oligarchs control, such as Burisma, who pay all the required bribes to stay in operation, such as a direct payment of $83,000/mo. to Hunter Biden, and that’s how “business” is done in Washington D. C., one hand washes the other and everyone (politicians and bureaucrats, at least, screw the taxpayer) goes home happy. Politicians of both parties were doing it, and that’s how we got Trump, who was a breath of fresh air, certainly, but unable or unwilling to even begin to clean out the Aegean Stables.
There is a lot of inane happy talk about replacing 200 bcm/y of Russian pipeline gas with LNG.
Excerpt from:
THE UKRAINE PLOT IS THICKENING WITH GERMANY AND FRANCE BARELY IN LOCKSTEP WITH US/UK-LED NATO
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-plot-is-thickening-with-germany-and-france-no-longer-in
Up to 40% Additional LNG Carrier Loads, if Russian Pipeline Gas Supply to Europe were Stopped
Brussels career bureaucrats make the same myopic mistakes as Washington career bureaucrats
Washington Career Bureaucrats: The only beneficiaries of their “Electrify-Everything” actions are:
1) Subsidized, multi-billion companies that supply the wind and solar systems, and
2) Utilities, that sell much more high-priced electricity, due to implementing the tens of millions of heat pumps that do not work on colder days, and electric vehicle that have marginal usefulness and are very expensive, compared to efficient gasoline vehicles
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/poor-economics-of-electric-vehicles-in-new-england
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/electric-bus-systems-likely-not-cost-effective-in-vermont-at
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/heat-pumps-are-money-losers-in-my-vermont-house-as-they-are-in
Everyone else gets screwed with higher taxes, fees and surcharges, and higher household electric rates, as happened in Denmark and Germany.
People are told to grin-and-bear-it, and to sacrifice, because they are “fighting” climate change, a la Don-Quixote tilting at wind mills, while the wind/solar-subsidy-collecting elites cruise around in private jets and yachts.
Brussels Career Bureaucrats: They likely have little hands-on experience in the energy sector. They urged EU countries not to sign long-term gas supply contracts with Russia, because that would send the wrong “virtue signal” regarding “weaning the EU off fossil fuels”. Just google, if you find this incredible.
Their myopic decisions did not foresee EU spot prices for natural gas would become “volatile”, i.e., about 5 to 10 times the prices of Russian gas, under long-term contracts.
Naïve career bureaucrats likely thought Russia would supply enough gas to lower spot prices, but Russia did not.
Various folks, including Brussels bureaucrats did not take any blame for their stupidity.
Instead, they tried besmirching Russia, but the gas system operating data did not co-operate.
However, Russia made sure to reliably provide pipeline gas, to clients with signed long-term contracts, as confirmed by Brussels, Germany, Turkey, etc. i.e., Russia was not to blame for high spot prices.
Russia has no contractual obligation to supply gas to the EU spot market.
Russia has no contractual obligation to fill the EU above- and belowground gas storage reservoirs
This was known by Brussels career bureaucrats, prior to their myopic decisions.
The net result was Europe’s energy costs increased by at least $200 BILLION per year, which offsets any benefits from Europe’s international trade.
NOTE: There is some consolation in all this. After all, there is the important “benefit” of strengthening the US/UK/EU long-term policy of squeezing/diminishing Russia.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/luongo-eu-sanctions-russia-equal-suicide-cop
LNG Consumption in Europe: Historically, the EU has imported very minor quantities of LNG, because LNG prices are about 25% to 30% higher than pipeline gas bought from Russia, under long-term contracts. That will always be the case, due to cost differences of applicable technologies.
The recent, cleverly-designed sanctions imposed on Russia did not include any restrictions on energy and materials flow from Russia to avoid additional price increases on world markets
Russia will make money, which will partially offset the cost of fighting in Ukraine, and of the long-lasting sanctions
The US/UK-led NATO will send more weapons and disguised trainers/mercenaries to Ukraine to increase the cost of fighting Ukraine
The end result will be more death and destruction lasting more than a few days.
Calculation of Additional LNG Carrier Loads
Assume an average LNG carrier capacity at 170,000 m3, equivalent to 76,500 metric ton of LNG
In 2020, world LNG demand was 360 million metric ton, equivalent to 4,706 LNG carrier loads/y. See URL
The 200 bcm/y of pipeline gas supply from Russia is equivalent to 1903 LNG carrier loads/y
There would need to be an enormous, worldwide increase in LNG carrier loads of about (4706 + 1903)/4706 = 40.4%, if Russian gas to the EU were stopped. See table in article
There would be a gigantic, additional strain on the world’s LNG system, which would send spot prices to unprecedented levels for many years.
At present, Europe lacks the capacity to receive and gasify that many carrier loads.
At present, there is a significant shortage of large-capacity LNG carriers
NOTE:
https://www.rivieramm.com/opinion/opinion/lng-shipping-by-numbers-36027
https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/natural-gas/liquefied-natural-gas-lng/lng-outlook-2021.html#iframe=L3dlYmFwcHMvTE5HX091dGxvb2svMjAyMS8
US Finally Becoming Competitive in World Markets
The US/UK-led NATO, baiting Putin to start a war in Ukraine, is one way for the US to become more competitive in international markets, at the expense of Russia, and the EU, and everyone else.
The gas shortage condition would be in place for up to 10 years, because it would take that long to build up additional:
– Gas production capacity, elsewhere in the world, to replace Russia’s 200 bcm/y of pipeline gas.
– LNG production plants and sending ports
– LNG carriers; average capacity 170,000 cubic meter of LNG
– LNG receiving ports and gasification plants
– Connections to existing onshore pipe systems, all while:
1) EU inflation would be off-the-charts
2) EU exports would dwindle.
NOTE: The above production and infrastructure build-ups would be in addition to what is required for the projected world-market growth of LNG
A useful contribution to the analysis. I’d add that Russia has been opening up new export markets in the Far East (particularly China) both through pipeline and LNG, often via the Arctic route (they were still using that in December, despite the earlier icing last year, resulting in some tankers being stuck in the ice that was too thick for them to plough through until rescued by the atomic icebreakers). Also, some of their export is to satellites like Belarus.
Very inciteful indeed. This work by John Mearsheimer is helpful in understanding the history as well.
Not to disagree with David’s emphasis on energy – oil, nuclear, and renewables – but if those incentives were subtracted from the equations, Putin would still be coveting Ukraine because it is a buffer between his country and the western ideologies that he despises and which are an existential threat to Communists.
Read this article, “The Forgotten Potential of Ukraine’s Energy Reserves”… https://hir.harvard.edu/ukraine-energy-reserves/
A lot of good data and expert insider knowledge, thanks, David. So oil, in all its refined stages, is an International Commodity. Then the price of a barrel, or equivalent, comes into question, ie, did all of the thrashing around by the Biden Administration cause changes in the price, and therefore a large surge in profitability, of oil producers? The Russian misadventure in Ukraine clearly has done so. Follow the money?
Weren’t Oil prices going up before Ukraine?
Weekly oil price chart ..
There’s “rising” and then there’s “RISING!!!”
Regardless we were screwed regardless from Brandon’s regime. He and the CIA just got us there faster.
Looks sort of like a hockey stick.
“Fungible” commodity!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fungible
Putin can’t have failed to notice how the West is crumbling from within. Political correctness and the corrosive woke identity politics, the disgust at Western achievements in history – even the industrial revolution. My own view is the UK at least has been dumbing down education for the last 30 to 40 years and replacing it with indoctrination and correct-think, the following explanation of the war in Ukraine appears to be aimed at a young Sesame Street audience, not adults.
“So Ukraine is a country in Europe, it exists next to another country called Russia.
“Russia is a bigger country, Russia is a more powerful country. Russia has decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine.
“So basically, that’s wrong.”
“We had sanctions before the actual invasion.
“We threatened sanctions to hopefully deter Russia from going in.
“You know like if you’re a parent and you tell your children ‘Well, if you do this, the punishment is gonna be that’ Right?
“And we hope that by doing that, it will deter our children from doing the wrong thing. Right?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1574104/Kamala-Harris-Biden-Russia-Ukraine-sanctions-the-morning-hustle-ont
A New York Times headline from January captured the sidelining of the EU well: ‘US and Russia will discuss European security, but without Europeans.’ And that definitely includes Brexit Britain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/world/europe/us-russia-europe-ukraine-nato.html
The West is in big trouble.
Yes fret, I agree. Like the picture at the head of the above post. Playground insults, for what is a complex situation. The global warming idiocy is just another symptom of poor education.
I’d go further, Jay. The global warming idiocy is a product of indoctrination and mass propaganda. It’s no accident that there is now a ‘crisis’ of climate anxiety in the young.
This ^
That was a benefit, not a bug, as far as the Leftists are concerned.
It’s time for us to understand that leave-it-in-the ground and green energy are treason.
Progressive Corruption (PC).
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) not limited to racism, Inequity, and Exclusion (DIE).
An Arab Spring in Libya, Egypt, etc. A Slavic Spring in Ukraine, Serbia, etc. An American Spring in America, Canada, etc.
A Pro-Choice “ethical” (i.e. relativistic) religion. A wicked solution (i.e. human sacrifice) for social, clinical, redistributive, and fair weather causes.
I would call you ghoulish if you weren’t so damn accurate.
The American Veep was selected based on gender, the color of her skin and far-left politics. Other top administration officials were chosen not on merit, but on skin color, gender, sexual orientation, social justice activism, etc., etc. Putin knows this.
It is no surprise that Putin attacked Ukraine while President FJB Brandon is in charge. Putin’s Russia made war on its neighbors during 3 of the last 4 administrations. The notable exception is Trump. Despite Trump’s failed charm offensive, Putin knew Trump was no one to mess with.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
This dumbing down has been going on since WWII. In 1948, Dorothy Sayers said,
Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that to-day, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass-propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard-of and unimagined?
. . . . .
Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee-meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?
We should nail political, media and climate alarmists on these points. We must force them to define their terms, stick to the topic, answer questions directly, allow no deviation and certainly not personal attacks.
Dorothy L Sayers is a much underrated writer.
Thanks, David, for another in-depth educational post.
Regards,
Bob
PS: Regarding U.S. anti-fossil-fuel politicians, let me quote a term used by my 4yo nephew, they are anti-American “doodie heads”.
If anyone is interested, one may attend in person or remotely, a 31 March presentation about how a low-carbon data-driven grid can be made to function. Me thinks the speaker is probably a doodie head, but we shall see.
https://www.getches-wilkinsoncenter.cu.law/events/14th-annual-schultz-lecture-in-energy-featuring-x-moonshots-audrey-zibelman/
“The low carbon electrical grids of the future will need to be powered by millions of geographically decentralized, weather-dependent power generation assets. Today’s grids are virtually the opposite: hierarchical, centralized and concentrated. Anything less than a seamless transition from the former to the future state could significantly impact the reliability, affordability and safety of electric power that is already being challenged by climate change.”
Speaker is Audry Zibelman:
Not just your garden variety doodiehead, but one with a lot of experience wrecking things and then leaving town. “Reforming Energy Vision”:
She was in Governor Cuomo’s cabinet where she “oversaw” the rollout of REV, but then left to become the CEO of Australia Energy Market Operator which she then left to head the electric grid “moonshot” of X.
So in the last 8 years she’s held major positions in two large electric utility systems and hasn’t stuck around either one long enough to see her changes though.
This sounds a lot like “You’re doing an excellent job; we invite you to be excellent somewhere else.”
You can find Audry’s description of the “grid moonshot” here. Sounds like more computer models — the “smart grid” taken to the next level.
It isn’t what one has done during their career (or job titles they have held), but what they have accomplished that is important. Were they effective at their job? Have they made a difference? Would the world be poorer had they not held those jobs?
I’ve seen this a lot in corporate life: new people come in at a high level, shake up the organization with a bunch of major changes then about the time the effects of those changes become apparent, they’re off to a different company touting their previous successes.
So I’m suspicious of people starting major initiatives and not sticking around to see them through.
One of my all-time favorite jokes is the story of three envelopes. What makes it so funny is it is so true. I can’t count the number of senior management and executives I’ve seen “invited to be excellent somewhere else.”
Salute!
TNX, David.
I am having a hard time finding a $$$ comparison, much less a work/time comparison to replace the “x” barrels per day with acres of PV panels and/or windmills. e.g. how many 1000 acres of PV panels to deliver the equivalent energy of “x” barrels? I realize that refining and using the oil has its own expense, but so does producing the PV panels and windmills, then acquiring the land. Oh yeah, the ever present storage problem for the volts and amps.
Inquiring mind wants to know when debating local greenies.
Gums sends…
Solar panels (and wind turbines) are not compatible with farming, ranching, or open space recreation such as hiking, hunting, photography, skiing, etc. They decrease the diversity of wildlife and their abundance. They destroy the ability to enjoy the natural scenery. They decrease the quality of life!
The easiest partial solution to the storage problem is not to store energy. It’s much cheaper than trying to store it. Of course, the more you do this the higher the marginal cost of extra energy produced and used, simply because so much of marginal output is not used.
It isn’t a complete solution, because there will always be Dunkeflaute situations which nothing less that a complete dispatchable backup can solve.
There is no equivalent because renewables are not dispatchable, they produce energy only at their own timetable, not on the timetable of demand. There have been previous articles on WUWT about building a GW of renawable production does not allow the removal of ANY reliable production (neither fossil fueled nor nuclear) because in today’s world ALL renewables still need backup. Thus the fossil fuel plants still exist, and oftentimes must be kept running at speed but producing no power so that they are available when (not if, but when) the renewalbles inevitably cease production, whether due to sunset or just the passing of a cloud, or if the wind is too weak or too strong, they will discontinue. By the same token, due to the benefits that cheap energy has provided to humanity, I would say that the “social cost of carbon” is not just negative (i.e., it provides a net benefit) but infinitely so.
from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2022/01/17/new-englands-clean-energy-transition-seems-heavy-on-fuel-oil/?sh=6090b0f57ee4
and most of that from Russia- new pipes to bring in the Marcellus shale are verboten
Am I correct in guessing that coal emissions (at least when producing electricity) have scrubbers in place so that the final output is scarcely “dirtier” than output from a natural gas turbine generator? But fuel oil exhaust has oftentimes not been scrubbed? I’m just making a wild guess here, does anyone have actual data?
You lost me at Russias criminal invasion of Ukraine.
Do you it’s not criminal, or it’s not an invasion or both?
Justified
Please explain your reasoning for this being justified.
The answer is probably NATO expansion and crickets chirping.
I agree that this is a criminal invasion, and all damage accounting should be laid at the feet of Putin, but I also contend it was preventable. See the links referenced above.
Pretty much every conflict throughout history was preventable, up to the moment when they weren’t.
https://www.conservapedia.com/Maidan_coup
Even if it were true, that doesn’t justify an invasion.
Putin’s is only in power due to a coup, does that justify Ukraine invading Russia?
Agreed. We can agree or disagree on the things that led up to this point but this invasion of Putin’s is unjustified and completely out of proportion. It needs to be stopped.
Irrelevant
He might be referring to the agreements made by James Baker and others – agreements that were broken.
“U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University”
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
It reminds me of US treaties with native American tribes. They too were broken.
Russia is not the Soviet union.
Oh… Not yet… But they are working on it.
You need to sort your dates out. Soviet Union. Gorbachev. Warsaw Pact. All gone. New reality. New situation. Change in circumstances.
Also – NATO does not, and never has, co-opted or compelled countries to join. You have to APPLY for NATO membership, and have to go through a process before you are admitted. It’s not NATO that has expanded, but that the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact has ceased to exist and been replaced with a collection of sovereign nations that decide their own fate.
The problem is that paranoid, psychopath Putin doesn’t like it, and he’d rather kill us all than accept that.
“What’s the point of a world that doesn’t have Russia in it?”
During the 1930’s Stalin organized a famine that killed 10’s of millions of Ukrainians, because of this many Ukrainians treated the advancing German’s as liberators.
Because of this, many people regard the Ukrainians as forever Nazi’s who deserve anything that happens to them.
Er, no. Many people regard the Ukrainians as forever Nazi’s because of the extensive and on going far right marches displaying Nazi and SS emblems and symbols. If you don’t want to be treated like a Nazi, then for heaven’s sake, stop dressing and behaving like one.
It wasn’t that long ago that a bunch of Nazi’s marched somewhere in the US. The ACLU even went to court to prevent the march from being banned.
By your logic, both the US and the ACLU are a bunch of NAZIs.
Let the record show that it was MarkW that stated this as fact, not me.
Let the record show that I affirm what MarkW stated.
Mark W
I affirm as well
And BLM, a Marxist organization not only marched, they rioted and ki!!ed police officers, so the US is a Marxist country of black nationalists.
So, the vast majority of the Ukrainian people have a Nazi tendency? Or is it just a very vocal and relatively small minority?
I think you know the answer to that.
Have you apprised Prince Harry of the uniform situation? He hasn’t worn one for a while…
No, just the Galicia region – you know, where the SS Gallicia Battalion came from. They have hijacked Kiev.
You raise the Duke of Montecito and I’ll raise John Cook. Joking aside, though, most countries have neo-nazi minority groups in them; it’s the response that defines a country. In the UK (and presumably the USA similarly) if such a group raises it’s ugly head, it’s usually identified as an extremist hate group, it’s members are monitored by security services and isolated from other such groups. Now compare that with Ukraine, where tacit approval is given, they can openly display Nazi and SS imagery and not only is nothing done to stop them but they are encouraged to continue as a cultural link to the past – imagine the outcry if Germany tried to do that?
What is done in the US to prevent Nazis from passing out literature or displaying emblems? The ACLU went to court to protect their right to free speech.
Are the down votes because you don’t believe people you don’t like deserve to have their civil rights protected?
Are you suggesting that the behavior of Professor Cook represents the country of Australia and all the rest of its inhabitants?
Is America to be judged by what Hell’s Angels wear?
No more than fretslider suggested that Prince Harry represented the UK and all of its inhabitants. Any country can be judged by its response to neo-nazi hate groups.
Actually, Prince Harry does have some legitimate claim to representing the UK as he is part of the Royal Family. That cannot be said of the others I mentioned.
Because of course being a Bolshevik is so much more Nobel. I remind you Putin was KGB
So was Andropov and Gorbachev, although not KGB, had huge amounts of influence over them and need I remind you that Putin never rose above middle-level in the KGB. Not that any of that actually means anything. We were discussing the neo-nazi problem, what exactly has that to do with Bolshevism and the KGB? I don’t understand why you decided to absent-mindedly wander off at a tangent.
Behaving? You mean like Putin?
The post you replied to doesn’t use the word behaviour I believe. In any case Putin is misbehaving, on a thoroughly horrific level.
Naziism is NOT RIGHT-WING!!!!!! Nor is “white nationalism”, those whiners want to be the “victim” just as all the other leftist-coddled “victims”, and want the government to enforce by fiat and force that they are the superior race, just as CRT tries to teach that the more melanin in a person’s skin the more righteous because “systemic racism” (which is a fairy-tale creation if ever I heard one, it just about begins with “Once upon a time…”) and the government should enforce that addled falsehood.
Mark, I think you have your history crossed a bit. Stalin starved millions in the 1930s. Hitler began his war against the Soviet Union in 1941. But I get your point.
All I stated was that the Germans invasion was after the Stalin starvation of the 1930’s. I didn’t put a time frame on that invasion.
Mark is totally correct, the Ukrainians treated the Nazis as liberators until of course the Nazis proved that they were every bit as bad as Stalin and a least Stalin wanted some of them to survive as long as they kissed his ass.
There are a lot of people here that simply don’t understand that there is almost no difference between Communists and Nazis. They believe pretty much the same thing, don’t think twice about exterminating anyone that disagrees with them and both strongly believe the state is more important then the individual.
So, like Trudope, Brandon, The A$$hat PM in NZ, etc.
My wife calls Trudope, Prime Minister Zoolander…
https://youtu.be/5_4MQoDHbcg
https://imgflip.com/i/3b3bi8
Yep, that fits.
No, not like that at all.
In what respect(s) is it justified?
Sorry posted before I finished.
In the same way that Germany and Austria were united, and the Sudetenland annexation was justified for example
Yep and Putin used almost exactly the same diatribe To justify invading Ukraine that Hitler used to invade Czechoslovakia. Hitler was only going to free the German nationals in the Sudetenland and leave the rest alone just like Putin said as well. Read Hitler justification it’s scary how close it is to Putin.
What has the US done when another country tries to influence and or put missiles on countries around us? Think bay of pigs….. The CIA has been mucking around in Ukraine for many many years. Always pushing to get turf close to Russia.
Why can I not up or down vote a few of the comments? I hope you are not trying to sway people on here. Let the the chips fall where they may.
The Ukraine had nuclear missiles, and at the insistence of the US and Europe got rid of them.
The Bay of Pigs was about Russian missiles in Cuba???????
Try learning at least a little bit of history. Please.
You honestly think the Soviet’s didn’t want to dominate the world and defeat and conquer the us?
The US on the other hand provide it did not want to conquer the world after WW2. It quite literally was in a position to do just that.
The Ukraine was not looking to conquer the Russians, you really think Putin is doing this out of fear of UKraine?
The Ukrainians already had Nukes they gave them up for security assurances from the west and Russia, how did that work for them?
Apples to oranges.
Cuba: offensive missiles, target –> U.S.
Ukraine: defensive missiles no target — until provoked.
ICMBs are certainly offensive, but they were programmed to target the US when the Russians left. They probably disabled most of their weapons when they pulled out of Ukraine. How Russia’s missiles could have acted as a Russian deterrent is a mystery.
*** Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), official language – Russian.
Remove guidance electronics, replace it with your own. Not that difficult.
“Justified” as in US Marshal Raylan enforcing his own brand of justice?
Whatever you meant, you need to justify your use of the term “justified” when it comes to Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine.
One of the best TV shows of all time.
“He pulled first; it was justified”
“You shot me in the back!”
“If you’d wanted to be shot in the front you should have run toward me!”.
But you weren’t referring to that, were you?
I had not seen any of that series until it was over. Once I saw the first episode, I watched them all in short order.
Much of the cast changed season to season, a lot of killin.
So having politicians you disapprove of justifies having your country invaded and your civilians killed.
What a nice person you are.
The Moscow Circus must be in town because the clowns are here.
You have an aversion to reality?
Dimwits here have already forgotten the Cuba Missile Crisis – international law is out the window when an existential threat is on your doorstep.
Ukraine President Zelensky said at the MSC, Munich Security Conference, that Ukraine must acquire nukes – nobody there objected. No time was wasted by Russia then.
Denazification continues. And it was Biden, and son, who put the junta in place in 2014.
The Moscow Circus is here and they sent the clowns in first. Get back in your clown car and peddle your ridiculous fiction elsewhere.
I’m seeing you think this is joke?
And there was I thinking the Nazi problem was cleared up in 1945.
The situation is not funny. You are.
As to thinking, I’m waiting for you to start.
As to Nazis, the only ones I’m seeing around here are you and the Russians.
Calm down, at least a little. I have read many places that Biden contributed, and not just in this last year. I recommend some research.
Now, I will take issue at the “denazification” term, that’s clearly a made-up justification.
Partly as a result of neo-nazi ideology, since 2014 the Ukrainian government has implemented policies against ethnic Russians, not just indiscriminate shelling of the breakaway regions, resulting in over 10,000 deaths, but also language requirements, and so forth.
Resurgent neo-nazism has greatly divided Ukraine.
This war could have been avoided by diplomacy: No Nato membership for Ukraine & no offensive missiles on Ukraine’s border with Russia. Stop shelling eastern Ukraine, implement the Minsk agreements.
The Ukrainian government never acted in good faith to follow through on its agreement (Minsk) with France, Germany, and Russia.
Washington never encouraged Ukraine to carry out the Minsk agreements (We certainly had the influence if we wanted to.)
At some point the Ukrainian government has to look in the mirror and reflect on their own actions in this sad affair.
A new cold war has descended on Europe… I hope Americans don’t pay an economic price for something we never signed up for nor were told about by the foreign policy elite that thought it was a good idea to repeatedly poke the bear.
Except NATO wasn’t really the reason, AFAICT, that was just the justification. So even had NATO made “iron-clad” promises of no NATO membership for Ukraine ever, I don’t think Putin would have been deterred, I think all the motivations (that he saw) would have still existed just as strongly, and because of the feckless leadership from the U. S. administration, this was Putin’s best opportunity to commit a heinous crime and get away with it. Which he likely will.
Russia has made it explicit about Ukraine not being in Nato for a long time, but I can’t read their minds.
However, if such was true (your assertion), call their bluff… what would it hurt, rather it would confirm your assertion.
Zelensky is Jewish… There aren’t many Jewish Nazis.
Zelenskyy also speaks Russian, banned by the Junta. Zelenskyy got 79% votes for the Minsk accords – nothing was allowed. He was threatened on camera by one of the extremists on Russia’s list.
I would see his position as being extremely in danger.
Andriy Parubiy is a Ukrainian politician who served as the Chairman (speaker) of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament from 2014 to 2019, an ideologist for Svoboda, a neo-nazi party in Ukraine.
Speaker of the parliament is right up there in the high councils of govt.
There have been and are other neo-nazis in the Ukrainian government.
That ideology has influenced Ukraine’s policies.
From 2014 until now the Ukrainian government and the neo-nazi Azov battalion and others have been shelling the breakaway regions in violation of the Minsk agreements, over 10,000 eastern Ukrainians have died as a result of that shelling.
Sadly, we are in a new cold war… let’s hope it doesn’t go nuclear.
Nobody wins that way regardless of ideology.
Ukraine had nukes, and gave them up.
They never ‘had’ – they were strict Soviet – no local access.
Then why did they get a treaty to give them up, you are a dope.
Once you have full physical control, replacing the control unit is not that difficult.
China has nukes.
China is on Putin’s door step.
China and Russia have fought each other several times in the last 50 years.
China and Russia have active disagreements over portions of Siberia.
By your logic, Russian should be invading China, not Ukraine.
Strange, but China is not in NATOstan – what map are you using, pray tell?
So in your world, NATO is the source of all evil, and Britain rules NATO with an iron fist.
I never said you have to be nuts to support Putin, but as bonbon show, it sure helps.
They already had nukes and gave them up, how did that work for them. Which government is acting like Nazis
We are the aggressors in this. Not Russia. We have absolutely no business being involved in Eastern Europe. NATO agreed to stay out of eastern Europe (former Warsaw Pact) in 1991; recently released UK documents confirm this. NATO has been moving eastward ever since. Our military wanted to return our forces to the US after we used 70% of V and VII Corps in desert storm, but our Politicians were already preparing to squeeze the Russians. (I spent 20 yrs in HQ USAREUR aka NATO Central Army Group working G3/G8). We had 10X the combat forces we have now in NATO; five division stationed in Germany with equipment for 6 more divisions (POMCUS) stored in Holland and Belguim. We further promised “first use nuclear weapons” if necessary to stop Warsaw Pact forces. Every time we have included a new nation in NATO, we have squeezed the bear by deploying NATO ground forces nearer Russia; the Cuban missile crisis taught us nothing; we put nukes in Turkey and Russian responded with Nukes in Cuba. We have been moving NATO troops ever closer to Russia for 20 yrs. Now we have managed to forge an alliance between thousand year old enemies, China and Russia (the worlds largest military and the worlds largest economy; Taiwan next?
I love how Putin’s lap dogs blame the victims.
Are you actually arguing that any country that does something Putin doesn’t like deserves to be invaded and have it’s civilians killed?
The New Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative is full steam ahead anyway. That includes Europe, Russia, China and Afghanistan, which London will do anything to block, with Biden the current fumbler after Pompeo.
This is the way out of nuclear brinkmanship, which should have stopped after Cuba.
But of course, you are correct. Democracies attack democracies all the time, and are a ceaseless threat to despotic imperial regimes like the Third Reich, the emperor’s Japan, Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR and Putin’s Russia.
But of course you are completely wrong and know nothing. Democracies never fight democracies. The US hasn’t fought a war of expansion for a century and a half. It has returned all conquered territories of the previous century to their previous totalitarian owners. Not since Castro’s coup has a US base overstayed its invitation. After Gadaffi’s coup we abandoned Wheelus. When Spain said get out we closed our bases and NATO left. When the Philippines said get out the US Navy got out. As you curiously admit the US has been reducing troop deployments in Germany by stages for the last 20 years.
The US has long record of saving the world from totalitarian imperialists and only totalitarian imperialists have any reason to fear us. Whose side are you on? –AGF
U. S. troops also left France when the French said get out.
The French were afraid of the US and its influence.
I know that in the 60s I heard a quote, told to the French, I believe to De Gaul, that we don’t want your country, all we have ever asked for is a place to bury our dead, BUT, the searches I have tried all come to much more recent quotes.
And TRUMP! finally started moving troops from back line countries who don’t pay their fair share of GDP toward their military to countries like Poland who do. I think NATO needs to be disbanded, US forces returned home, less those countries who are willing meet their international, contractually agreed to, commitments.
How much does Germany make from the 40,000 US troops there, and they JUST NOW said they would finally get to 2% GDP for their military. They said it, but don’t hold your breath for them to actually deliver.
I wonder if someone told them that when TRUMP! gets back in the White House, all options will be on the table, including shutting off Nord Stream 1 and 2, and anything else coming from Russia. Their change from, “we will send them helmets”, much like Obama’s sending blankets and MREs during Crimea, to Stingers and Javelins and the 2% was really abrupt. I can’t believe that anyone in the Brandon WH had anything to do with it.
Putin has also hurt Russia very badly. I talk to my ex in Tula Russia on a daily basis. The Russian coffers filled with oil revenues have not reached the Russian people in any way. There is huge problem with inflation, incredible loss with the ruble falling very significantly etc. Basically Putin has failed his own country I believe. I have said to my ex for a long time that Putin should concentrate on Russia rather than get mixed up in foreign affairs like Syria, Iran.
Ain’t central planning great?
Putin is a Hitler…a criminal…a mafia type…he is only friends with N. Korea…Iran….China…Syria…he manipulated elections in Russia,,,he poisoned rivals with polonium…he and the oligarchs are in control and Russia needs a regime change badly….and Putin needs to croak.
Amnesia seems to have struck, hard. Maybe it is all that fracking CO2.
Cuba Missile Crisis . Thank God we had JFK or we would not be here now.
Thirteen Days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DqzjoXz22c
When Ukraine Presiden Zelensky said at the Munich Security Conference they must acquire nuclear weapons, Russia did not wait even 13 days!
Any fool that thinks that is funny just has not seen the move, nor gotten the memo.
JFK screwed up the invasion of Cuba…he should have done it right or not at all. Ukraine had nukes and gave ’em up…no doubt a lesson for all. The lesson here is do not appease Putin like Hitler was appeased.
JFK saved your life.
Guess how – the US removed their Jupiter missiles in Turkey, aimed at Moscow. Without a shot fired. RFK did the secret deal.
Ukraine never had nukes – they were strictly Soviet. Ukraine does/did have nuke processing knowhow. What alerted Russia is NATO nuke-capable launchers sneaking into Ukraine. All NATO nukes are strictly NATO – Ukraine would have no button. In other words the USA could launch at any time.
Of course JFK and RFK were never forgiven, and look what happened to them!
In hindsight, I think JFK made the Cuban missile crisis worse, not better. The CIA and/or State Department had promised aid and support to the Bay of Pigs invaders before JFK was inaugurated. So with change of administration, change of policy, but no one told the invaders! That would have been nice, don’t you think? I believe, had the U. S. provided the support promised, the communists could have been completely removed, and Cuba today would be, well, probably just another poor Caribbean Island? No, I think they would be a lot better off than any of the other Caribbean Islands, they had/have more advantages. Think Bahamas, with more high ground to retreat from hurricanes.
Prior to the revolution, Cuba was the wealthiest country in all of Latin America/Caribbean. After Cuba fell to communism, Argentina became the wealthiest country in Latin America.
Castro’s “Revolution” was very costly, but had the whole lot been expelled by the Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuba would have certainly recovered, and then some, by now. They may well have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the NAFTA jobs giveaway of the last 30 years!
Missiles in Turkey were obsolete…old technology….newer missiles did not need to be in Turkey.
bonbon offers us Hollywood history. If ever there were grounds for a minimalist approach, it is to history as presented by the Marxists of cinema, a la West Wing or Oliver Stone’s JFK. That’s really scraping the bottom of the academic bucket.
Hollywood history? It’s more like Looney-Tunes history.
The joke is Putin escaped [the collapse of the USSR] with… a washing machine:
“How crazed despot Putin escaped collapsing Soviet Union with just a washing machine – and has vowed revenge ever since”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17763981/putin-revenge-soviet-union/
The only thing that separates a communist from a fascist is the ownership of the means of production. Everything else is totally in sync.Totalitarian.
Absolutely!!!!
Even if the “means of production” is not owned by the State, when the State tells the producers what and how much to produce, where to get their raw materials and how much to pay for it, who they can hire to produce it, what to charge when they sell it and who they can sell it to, it’s the same thing as State-owned production, hm? Maybe even worse, because the “crony capitalists” get fabulously rich off that business model. All of that happened in Nazi Germany, so don’t tell me I’m wrong about any of it unless you can bring irrefutable, incontrovertible proof, not just opinion pieces from all the usual suspects (read left-leaning Lame-Stream Media). (So left-leaning they have toppled over!) Under the current “business model” of Russia, and to a large extent Ukraine, the “oligarchs” are the owners of the alleged so-called independent means of production. So in actual practice, there is no difference.
There is already a $1m bounty on his head.
If Russian oligarchs raised that by a factor of 100, it would be accomplished quickly and the would save billions. Amazing that the deed is not yet done.
Putin sees Russian glory as his glory. He wants to return Russia to the glory he feels it enjoyed during the days of the Soviet Union, and the first step in that process is recreating the Soviet Union. The Ukraine is just the second step. The first steps were Crimea and Georgia.
Putin is for Putin….he now has the most expensive mansion in the world on the Black Sea. The population if Russia is declining…huge poverty….Dictators tend to get out of touch with reality. Stalin was so feared that when he had a stroke…the servants were too afraid to enter his bedroom to ask why he had not appeared so he laid on the floor for hours…some justice after all….may Putin meet the same fate.
I’ll go further, Putin sees himself as Russia.
Does this sound like anybody else we know from history?
Peter Ustinov? Well I didn’t know, so I just guessed.
More like the pre-Soviet Russia of Nicholas (II? III? How many?).
Today Ukraine. Tomorrow Israel. China and Russia, together again. And then WW3 begins.
Thank you, David Middleton.
Your contributions to WUWT are always fact-filled, well-documented with links to reliable sources and inevitably save me from having to do a lot of work.
I’ve had people accuse me of having my own research department… 🍻
Your head of R&D deserves a raise.
How can he give is head a raise?
Buy a bigger hat? /s
Wow I just reread what I wrote, that can be taken a completely different way, on the other hand its pretty easy for even a teenage boy.
You don’t? 🙂
Typo alert: “new” -> “net” ?
Fixed.
The US invented the oil industry and produced its own oil for a century….Japan depended on US exports until the oil was cut off due to Japan’s China invasion. In the 1960s , I drove a VW Beetle at 30 mpg and gasoline was $0.30/gal…..one cent per mile.
Thanks David; I was hoping you’d weigh in on this.
Censor me if you must. Sorry I’m not supporting the narrative like a good boy. The same powers that lie about global warming are now telling the truth about Ukraine?
The “powers that lie about global warming” are mostly babbling incoherently about Ukraine.
Those would be the same powers that are now calling Putin a “madman”, trying to deflect any culpability for setting up the situations that caused Putin to see an invasion of Ukraine as advantageous. (Again, I’m not letting Putin off the hook, he’s still a criminal, but I believe this situation was preventable. If it was not preventable, why did it not happen while Trump was in office?)
Trump treated Putin as a worthy adversary. He respected him as the leader of a major world power, while making it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate any schist from thugs
Biteme and his ilk disrespected Putin, while prancing around like a bunch of Kansas City alphabet people. See Blazing Saddles for the context of “Kansas City *******”.
Facts can be checked. Just declaring you are going to hide your head and not believe anything makes you an ostrich.
So set me straight. Show me where I’m wrong?
To show you where you are wrong, you would have to actually say something. All you have done so far is declare that you refuse to look at any facts you don’t agree with. To do so makes you look like a close minded fool. If that’s the look you are going for, more power to you.
Exactly. They are Straussian liars!.
You could use some fact-checking yourself.
The war on Ukraine is naked Russian aggression, period. There is no justification. The Russian military is guilty of war crimes.
So is the American military, but let’s not split hairs. “Might makes right” is not acceptable foreign policy for any country, no matter how big or powerful it believes itself to be.
“Nuke makes right” is not acceptable…
There fixed it for ya.
And YOU are telling the truth?
No, I’m drawing a comparison. I leave it up to others to discover their truth, but I don’t impose it on them.
The truth is the both suck, but one invaded the other and one is a threat to other nations in the world and the other is not.
As for comparisons of the US and frankly any other nation in history is simple. At the end of WW2 the US had the greatest military machine the world ever had known, it had bases and troops in every corner of the world, was the only country able to project its power any were, was totally safe from attack and had was the only nation with the most destructive force ever known to man. What did the US do, it transitioned to a peaceful posture and rebuilt its former enemies and much of the world economy.
It was only the presences of the Communist/fascist of the Soviet Union that brought the US back into the for front of world power.
Stop with the equivalency nonsense.
The only comparison I drew was that both had committed acts that might be viewed as war crimes and if you were looking at the record honestly then you would agree. That’s all.
The History Behind the Russia-Ukraine War – Antiwar.com Original
The History Behind the Russia-Ukraine Warby Scott Horton Posted on
March 03, 2022
Just to get this out of the way first real quick: Whenever someone dares to differ with the common government and TV narrative about Russia and their role in the world, that person is usually instantly condemned as spouting “Russian talking points,” or being “paid by Putin.” This is probably especially the case this week as Russia is waging an aggressive invasion against their neighbor Ukraine as we speak.
But that is still nonsense. Where would a Texan obtain these talking points? Are they true?
[read on, if you dare…]
Russia, particularly Putin, views NATO expansion as a threat…
I think that idea started not only by the steady expansion east towards Russia’s borders, but also when NATO began changing from a defensive organisation into an intervention force acting beyond the borders of NATO countries. The first Russia might have been able to live with but the second rang alarm bells in Moscow.
David,
I generally enjoy your articles and agree with your points on energy. But the above is just a blow-off response to the reality underlying a very serious issue. So here’s a quote from the article by George Keenan, who was the force behind setting up NATO to counter the USSR:
Kennan complained to the Times’ Thomas L. Friedman in 1998,
“I think [NATO expansion] is the beginning of a new Cold War. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.
“Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
“Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”
Is Putin a bad guy? Yes. Have the Neo-Cons been meddling in Ukraine since the end of the cold war? Yes. Would Putin have invaded without the meddling and the aggression? We don’t know, but the meddling obviously didn’t deter him.
So a Russian invasion is in progress and people are being killed and the country laid waste. The only relevant question now is how to stop it. Maybe it could be stopped right now if the Ukrainians would negotiate a settlement that excludes NATO membership.
Unfortunately, right now the West is encouraging the Ukrainians to fight, which means Putin will probably need to go the scorched earth route to prevent NATO from setting up shop in Ukraine. This is exactly what the Neo-Cons, who involved us in pointless wars in the Middle East, want. And this is exactly what Brandon and his handlers want – a ready made diversion from their ongoing incompetence and corruption, and a convenient excuse for cratering the US economy.
So… We should be encouraging the Ukrainians to surrender?
Well, with NATO having intervened in many countries since they changed their role in the early 90’s, why doesn’t NATO intervene now?
NATO nations are intervening by supplying Ukraine with Javelin antitank missiles, Stinger MANPAD’s, etc.
No, I didn’t say that. We should be encouraging negotiations to end the killing before it escalates further. The first step is to find out what Putin and Zelensky can mutually live with. Neither you nor I know what this is, and we’re obviously not going to find out given blatant media / government censorship and bias.
What we should understand, is that this crisis furthers the interest of ‘progressives’ who are highly committed to intervening in people’s lives, both domestically and overseas. And while $120+/bbl oil may sound great to producers (I’ve worked there), please keep in mind that these same progressives not only do not like oil or any other fossil fuel, but actively want to use this crisis, and its economic knock-on effects on fertilizer, food and other commodities, to crater the West and “build back better”.
We have been encouraging negotiations… At least we were when Trump was in office.
That’s right. And that’s why there was no invasion then, notwithstanding the fact that Putin was just as much a badass then as he is now.
President Trump was and still is a “badass.”
Putin is a thug.
No. Putin must leave Ukraine. No “negotiation.”
We don’t parlay with criminals. We capture them or kill them.
“We don’t parlay with criminals. We capture them or kill them.”
All of them? There’s a lot of them out there – who’d you like to start with?
Frank. Seriously? All or nothing?? 🤨
Who would I like to start with?
Well….. #1 – Putin, #2 – Maduro, #3- those behind the 2020 U.S. presidential vote rigging, #4 — people who run puppy mills, #5….. well, you get the idea…. “all” is a lot of bad ‘uns. 🤠*
*Note: these are illustrative examples, not my “top 4” many other bad actors would be equally desirable to be captured, i.e., stopped, or killed; given the exigency, however, I would put Putin at #1 for the moment (and any other leaders who would step into his shoes).
We can start with those who have been invading their neighbors. This is Putin’s third offense.
Frank you wouldn’t be wrong if Putin was rational, but I don’t think he’s playing the game you think.
Bob, regardless of this mental state, he’s been playing the same game for 20 years. What to you think about Zelensky holding out for NATO intervention while his subjects bear the brunt of Putin’s assault?
Putin has no interest in negotiating, that’s the problem. He’s not looking for concessions. Zelensky has no choices other than winning or losing, his people have zero interest in being conquered. Putin thought they would roll over, they aren’t even in a lot of the predominantly Russian areas, they may think being part Russia would be OK, but not with Putin in charge. If this wasn’t the case Kharkiv would have fallen on day one.
No one here is privy to the ‘negotiations’, so have no idea what Zelensky’s choices are. Putin’s Russia has enough problems without trying to conquer Ukraine, so am willing to accept at face value that the issue is NATO expansion. As for the time line, you might want to see how long it took all of NATO to subdue Serbia, not to mention the length of the air campaign in Desert Storm.
Frank
Unfortunately I think you are just plan wrong, I think Putin is off his noddle and is going full on legacy mode.
I think Putin is rational, he rationally saw an opportunity. He’s still a criminal and a thug, but he’s a rational one.
David.
The use or the utilization of “We” in your statement is very invasive.
And no one really cared about Ukrainians and their problem of a real and dangerous escalating conflict with Russia… for many many years now, for not saying decades.
Oh, perhaps President Trump tried at some point… also Macron too… but that was all it… not enough though, as neither UN or EU showed any interest or will or effort towards deescalating that conflict.
cheers
Then you are advocating a sovereign nation give up its right to choose its destiny and what alliances and foreign policies it wants to pursue because a neighbor nation threatens them if it doesn’t? Then it is no longer a sovereign nation if another dictates what they can or can’t do.
It is no longer a sovereign nation if another dictates what they can or can’t do.
Precisely.
Like when some one at the top of Law and Order in Ukraine was fired or perhaps resigned under pressure, simply because Joseph sezz and willzzed so.
And that was not a Russian Joseph, by the way.
🙂
Clyde,
With all due respect, we crossed that Rubicon a long time ago. E.g., we’ve told Iran (“a sovereign nation”) that they can’t build nukes (“choose its destiny”) at least in part (if we’re honest) because it’s pretty damn difficult to f@*$ with a country that has nukes, never mind what “a neighbor nation” might think.
This isn’t just Russia and Ukraine going at it in a vacuum. Biden (or whomever) and the other leaders of the NATO nations are taking actions that 1) will have enormous economic consequences world-wide and 2) might result in military conflict between two nuclear powers.
Note, I would agree with you on this, like I agree with your skepticism of climate alarmism and its associated policy interventions, if, say, the US, a sovereign nation, and its NATO allies, also sovereign nations, were to publicly declare that under no circumstances is Ukraine going to be allowed into NATO. But no such declaration has been made, which should make everyone here wonder if the current crisis is not so much a bug, but a primary feature, of our interventionist foreign policy.
The essence of our difference of opinion is compulsion. If we were putting economic pressure on Ukraine to join NATO, I would say that it would be wrong. To force others to do what they don’t want to do is wrong when they are not harming others. It is a moral act to help others that are weaker when they are attacked, even if they are not members of a treaty. The only reason that NATO would deny a request to join is if they were more concerned about the consequences than allowing a nation to choose its destiny. If any nation wants to join NATO, their request should be considered, and unless there is a good reason, such as not believing the sincerity of their support, the request should be granted.
If you observe someone getting off on torturing an animal, and tell the person to quit, you are doing a moral thing. If the person then tells you that you should mind your own business, or he’ll punch your lights out, you have a couple of choices. You can take the easy way out and retreat, or you can call his bluff personally, or call the police. The point is, the moral act is to support the right action, and not back off when a bully threatens. It has been my experience that when bullies get away with bad behavior, it allows them to not only continue to act that way, but it emboldens them to escalate their behavior.
Nobody would give a flip whether or not Iran had nukes if they would give up trying to over throw their neighbors.
That’s the difference you are ignoring. If you want to be treated like a sovereign nation, one prerequisite is to start acting like one.
Agree. So maybe we and the British shouldn’t have overthrown Mosaddegh and installed the Shah, who, in turn, was overthrown by Khomeini. Who issued a fatwah against nukes, by the way.
There are many examples of our leaders screwing up when they intervene in the affairs of other nations. What makes me sad, however, is that, while so many of the good folks here are willing to call bs when our leaders attempt to intervene in our lives on the basis of junk climate science, they are mostly inclined to give the same incompetents free rein to intervene in the lives of others.
You make it sound like the decision to overthrow Mosaddegh was made in a vacuum.
Frank
You are lost. The US exercises its power to achieve stability, and yes often it does it quite stupidly. But that’s not the same as exercising power to to generate chaos and to conquer others.
As I stated earlier the US was in the position to dominate and conquer the whole world after WW2, no one could have stood in our way. But we didn’t. why. now put the the leaders in Iran in that position or Putin or Xi or Hitler or Castro and tell me what they would have done.
Frank
Most of what you quoted here is accurate. But I don’t believe that Putin invaded because he felt threatened. The timing may be because he feared NATO membership for Ukraine but there is no doubt in my mind he has always wanted to rebuild the Soviet Empire. However it’s just as likely his own age has something to do with it. He has achieved much of this dream already, the central Asian republics are mostly under his control, much of the caucuses are as well, Belarus is under his control and half of Moldova is as well, he has more troops in Moldova then Moldova does. All that’s left is the Ukraine and the Baltic states.
Mr. boder:
You are very likely correct. Russians, unlike historical Germans, are not congenital invaders. They watch for something to be unguarded and then, steal things when they get the opportunity.
Our pseudo-president did much to create the impression that NOW was the time by his foolish-at-best, evil-at-worst, remarks about the situation in the recent past.
Historical Germans are congenital invaders?
That is to say that the (average) historical German leader aggressively, assertively, takes what belongs to others (e.g., for “lebensraum” (if I spelled that correctly, don’t really care)). Whereas, the (average) Russian, equally wanting what belongs to others, waits until something is unguarded and, then, takes it.
The key difference is deterrent:
Russians will be deterred by a moderate amount of strength (thus, peace through strength), and will not attack if they will likely incur a great cost to do so.
Historical Germans (and, perhaps, these do not even exist anymore to any significant degree) attacked when they thought they could win — even if at great cost.
Maybe. But would point out that Russia extends over 11 time zones and they have all-year sea access, so not sure how much empire he needs. Also, garrisoning Moldova seems to fit the pattern that he doesn’t want a NATO enclave on his border.
Frank, also, there already non-Ukraine, NATO, bases well within easy striking distance of Russia.
Ukraine and NATO is only a flimsy excuse to attack (just as Russia did in Georgia with another pretense).
NATO membership is not so flimsy an excuse if this is at least the second time he’s reacted to it. Why not just take if (NATO membership) off the table and see what happens?
Because you would be encouraging Putin to do it again to another country.
Are you not familiar with the history of Neville Chamberlain?
https://www.biography.com/political-figure/neville-chamberlain
Putin has been demanding that NATO be rolled back to its pre-1997 membership… Booting out the former Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet republics.
If Ukraine joins NATO now, Article 5 would automatically be triggered. Boom. Again, take it off the table.
Chamberlain? How about Molotov-Ribentrop conspiring to carve up Poland, which triggered Britain’s version of Article 5.
A flimsy excuse, waved around 1,000 times, is still a flimsy excuse.
Pretty much right. I’m getting the sense that many older Russians have never ceased to view Ukraine as a part of Russia, Kiev was once the capital of Russia. So Putin’s rationale is that he’s restoring mother Russia. (I still think Putin is a criminal… see elsewhere.)
Frank,
You are reading the game wrong, Putin wants Ukraine, no different then Hitler and the Sudetenland. Defeating him and then giving him an out might work, but he needs to be stopped first.
How about taking NATO membership off the table and see what happens? Heretofore, our ‘allies’ have not even been ‘paying their fair share’, to quote Brandon from the other night. The Cold War should have ended decades ago.
I don’t think it would matter. Putin has demanded that all of the former Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet republics be booted out of NATO.
To make it easier to invade them when he’s ready.
Frank – Russia has limited all year access to the sea and, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, no shipyards capable of building anything bigger than a frigate or small destroyer. The shipyards in Crimea are capable of building cruisers and, indeed, are building 2 at the moment for Putin – to a similar specification as the one that the French impounded. Now ask me again how much empire he needs?
Richard,
Putin annexed Crimea after Obama & Co. orchestrated a coup in Ukraine that established a hostile regime. That’s not empire building, that’s maintaining a buffer between you and people like Hillary Clinton.
Sure sounds like Putin propaganda. Prove it.
Righto. USSR invaded Afghanistan only after the Shah took control of Iran. Stepping stones to the Indian Ocean. The Black Sea and Mediterranean are strategically worthless by comparison.
Does any man ever have enough money or power? When the avarice harms others, society has a responsibility to rein in the power. That’s why Congress passed anti-trust laws and nations sign mutual-aid treaties.
Why is Putin entitled to get whatever he wants?
There was an article posted on Russian media, quickly taken down, making it sound like this is just a reunification of mother Russia. Obviously, the longer Ukraine exists as a separate country the harder it will be to subjugate and reabsorb it, but I think it may be too late already. It will be sort of like when USSR invaded Afghanistan, there will never be a peaceful state.
“Would Putin have invaded without the meddling and the aggression? We don’t know, but the meddling obviously didn’t deter him.”
This is where all logic blaming NATO expansion goes off track. If anyone bothered to listen to Putin’s rambling defense of his actions, it is clear his problem with NATO’s expansion wasn’t the threat it may pose to Russia, but the threat it posed to PUTIN to re-establish the old USSR/Russian Empire. He would be engaged in the same invasion if NATO did not exist.
Nice treatise.
BUT: The US had no business determining what a Independent State could or would do in the future.
As to the Russians in Ukraine. There are so many ethnic Russians in Ukraine because Stalin killed so many Ukrainians by starvation to make room for the Russians. That is a history some Ukrainians still alive today remember, and have passed that knowledge on to their children and grandchildren, and to their great grandchildren. They would never have been taught it in the schools of the Soviet Union.
So do MANY Ukrainians hate the ethnic Russians, probably. But Russia used the ethnic Russian population as justification to take Crimea and the SE regions in 2014. That population largely due to “ethnic cleansing” of Stalin through starvation.
So those defending Russia, look a little farther in the history of this relationship.
Well done, David. There are tons and tons of crap reporting out about the war—early on someone posted a video (wish I had saved the link) supposedly of an armored vehicle involved in the invasion. It showed an 8-wheeled vehicle with a small turret and gun sitting next to two unused railroad tracks in a field with green grass. There is of course no green grass in Ukraine in February, and the armored car was a bit dated. It was a German Panzer-Aufkfarungs-Abteilung 4 from WW2!
And Kiev honored a “ghost pilot’ that shot down 20 Russian planes – with footage from a well known computer game. MSM lapped it up, and had to puke later.
There was also lots of video of “mig jets over Kiev” that turned out to be rehashed from the Moscow air shows of years past.
Someone posted a video. How official.
The only official videos that I have seen have been the grainy black and white ones you get off of a drone video feed.
The BTR-60 is an 8 wheeled APC with a small turret. There are lots of BTR-60’s involved in this war.
Design copied from 1945?
The one in this vid was definitely not moving, gave the impression of being part of a war museum.
Only Ukraine ones afaik – Russia upgraded to BTR-80’s as their standard wheeled APC some time ago. Purely as a matter of interest, has anyone seen pictures of BTR’s in the invasion? The only picture I’ve seen of an APC was a Russian BMP.
I’ve seen several photos of Ukrainian BTR-60’s.
MC,
The vehicle in the upper left hand corner looks like a self-propelled coat rack.
Yeah, that one doesn’t quite fit in with the blitzkrieg terror theme.
The “coat rack” is a radio antenna. It was a communications vehicle (funkenwagon, IIRC). Not all combat vehicles had radios during the Nazi blitzkrieg. Communications vehicles were integral components of the blitzkrieg.
Gosh David!
Is there anything you don’t know?
I used to be an avid wargamer and have almost as many military reference books as geology and earth science books.
I also have a closet full of model airplane, helicopter, armored vehicle and ship model kits… Mostly Vietnam era and WWII Pacific and CBI theater subjects.
It looks like Sweden is sending military aid:
OMG! The dreaded IKEA anti furniture launcher.
I have been wondering just how ‘neutral’ nations manage to ship weapons into a country under seige and with most of the airports bombed and the Russians supposedly in control of the air. Anybody have any insights on just how weapons are being supplied?
Across the polish boarder
But once in the Ukraine there are 190,000 Russians and tanks and armed helicopters!
I hope there aren’t really any idiots here who think Ukraine isn’t presently under devastating bombardment. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nearly-1-million-refugees-have-fled-ukraine-russia-warns-nato-stay-out?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=520
Obama, Biden, McCain, Biden’s Slavic Spring.
While everyone is looking to Ukraine,China, the 500lb gorilla that is aligned with Russia, owns just about the entire supply chain for the US. We don’t even make bicycles and screwdrivers anymore. Not the greatest time to start WW3. Oil is king but not without manufacturing.
On Feb 04 2022 China and Russia signed an epoch-making treaty. The Belt And Road Initiative is now in full swing.
NATOstan went ape*shit.
The US must join up with the BRI – as Trump always said getting along with Russia is a good thing, and look what NATOstan did to him!
During Trump’s time, a Russian force in Syria moved towards an American position and about 180 Russians were wiped out by a missile strike. Trump was sort of speak quietly but carry a Big Stick.
Trump tried to reason with Kimmy Jong because he wanted to feel that he had done everything possible for peace if force had to be used later.
Freedom-loving people have a lot of reforms they need to make. If they know what is good for them.
What I find fascinating is the number of people who declare that Ukrainian corruption justifies the Russian invasion.
1) If corruption justifies invasion, is there any country in the world that doesn’t need to be invaded?
2) Is there anyone out there that doesn’t honestly believe that Russia isn’t even more corrupt than the Ukraine?
With Biden and the Democrats running two branches of the American government, how soon until we’re invaded because of corruption?
I jest, of course. Our government is corrupt no matter who is in charge. The Democrats just tolerate a higher amount of corruption (extremely high) as long as they get their pet programs funded.
More corrupt than the US? Not by a longshot.
So, you are moving to Russia?
Exactly how much money did the Bidens (père et fils) receive from Burisma and/or Ukraine?
If you don’t know, I suppose you could always ask Tony Bobulinski.
Tony won’t talk, he is in federal custody for a year or so. If they even got a whiff of him talking it would end up like Epstein. Also I think he only got a year or so, the Brandon DOJ could easily find a way to make it 5 or 10.
There is no justification for the Russian invasion, period. Having said that, the West had an opportunity after Maidan to clean up the endemic corruption in Ukraine and give the people of the country a far better system – who knows, it might have spread into Russia over time! Instead nothing was done and the West looked on as the same corrupt oligarchs secured their slices of the pie, business as usual.
“Hey you guys, stop stealing & leveraging from others through your positions of power”
OR
“Hey you guys, we’ll give you a Billion from our taxpayers, but you have to promise to keep us in the loop and keep the individual kickbacks quiet.”
Cleaning it up would have meant giving up their share.
If the west did as you say, how would that not terrify Putin more? There was only one way to keep Putin out of Ukraine and on the back burner of history, and that is Trumps way of letting him know he would pay a huge price and lose on top of it.
Really Reagan’s game plan but used well by Trump.
Okay, but let’s not forget the stupidity proving grounds in California of effectively blocking pipelines from TX and NM with decadal lags in the permit process before dropping them. That is why the west coast buys foreign oil.
62 percent of voters say Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president:
I believe it would have been 100% certain Putin decline invasion, had the voters recovered the House and retained the Senate along with the Trump. With out flipping the House Putin may have still attempted to invade.
Well, thanks for the factual context of energy stats. I think the bigger context is accurately summarized by Victor Davis Hanson:
“It [Biden administration] nihilistically slashed gas and oil production by canceling federal leases, oilfields, and pipelines while pressuring banks not to lend for fracking.
“In just a year, Biden reduced America from the greatest producer of gas and oil in the history of civilization to an energy panhandler begging the Saudis and Russians to pump more of the oil that America needs but will not tap for itself.”
For example, yes, we use Keystone pipeline for a talking point. Keystone is not the only one – the administration has opposed or withdrawn support for pipelines including a major pipeline from Israel to Europe. My point being that when the world is attacking energy production and disliking the inevitable result, the answer is energy production.
Biden may not be the underlying cause of the fire or the spark. But he is the added degree of oxygen that made it possible.
Thanks for this excellent essay. Perhaps you should amend the text “will make it yet even worse” with “will make it worser” 😂😂😂😂🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
I almost wrote it that way… 🍻
There is something inherently funny about the word worser. Your essay of course was not for comedy, but these days a little humor goes a long way. : 0 )
(I was the class comedian in 1970 at Tates Creek High School. Still trying.
I actively try to not miss opportunities for humor, particularly puerile, juvenile humor… Even in serious posts…🍻
And I applaud you for that. 👏 😂👍
Where & when hydro is not used in the land of cheap hydro power.
https://www.pacificpower.net/community/service-area.html
Pacific Power seeking 12.2% rate increase in 2023
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/03/pacific-power-seeking-122-rate-increase-in-2023.html
https://www.pacificpower.net/content/dam/pcorp/documents/en/pacificpower/my-account/bill-inserts/OR%20Labeling%20Insert%20Large%20Business.pdf
Pacific Power to remove hydro dams
https://www.pacificorp.com/about/newsroom/news-releases/pacificorp-announces-joint-agreement-to-advance-klamath-river-dam-removal-project.html
Wow, Mr. Oregon.
That is disgusting. Those wind/solar, “renewables” hustlers will stop at nothing to stuff more money into their pockets. Getting rid of HYDRO-power. Amazingly stupid (or evil, depending on which group one is talking about).
Ms. Washington
Last chance to launder money before our immoral and bankrupt Empire falls? This is all related. War is always about resources. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-asks-congress-10b-ukraine-aid-225-billion-covid-funds
This raises the other perennial question of:
How much oil could an oil sheikh chuck
If an oil sheikh could chuck oil?
But, wood they?
Don’t know. We can only gas. 🙂
This will be my last comment on the matter. I noticed that older folks have a problem discerning propaganda from reality. We all do. Stop pretending that legacy media and Washington DC have any integrity or honor left. We should all avoid a headlong rush to war based on anything coming from the media or our government officials. Let them send their new woke army to fight. My family has been in America since the 1690’s. We have served in every conflict. This government, that calls me the number one domestic threat, that wants my history erased due to hard feelings, that allowed an illegal alien to murder my relative, that shipped our jobs overseas, that has invaded other sovereign states based on lies from the intelligence community, wants me and my kind to put the past behind us and rally around the flag of a Nation that no longer cares for its own people. I don’t think so.
So, you are moving to Russia?
Yawn
Right after I hear you are on the frontlines in Ukraine fighting the red menace.
It really amazes me how people who have never been to any place more exotic than a left wing college class room declare that the US is the most corrupt country that has ever existed. And how if only old people were as enlightened as they were they might be able to fix things.
I have traveled. Machinist by trade.
The swamp in DC is incredibly corrupt, just look at what they did to TRUMP!. The DOJ and FBI and CIA all knew there was no TRUMP! Russian connection, but they used their power to destroy as many republicans as they could. Obama, who hated Flynn, probably still laughs about what his minions did to him every day.
I worked in city code enforcement, for 24 years, and continually got “pressured” too massage rules for friends of politicos. Asking for an email detailing the bending of the rules usually worked, and the requests became less frequent, OR the job was taken away and given to a more pliable inspector.
As a plans examiner I was once told to do whatever it took to approve some BAD plans. I just put a not beside my unsigned “APPROVED” stamp stating, not reviewed, approved per “my supervisor”. Inspector to field verify all code requirements. Nothing was ever said to me about that.
So, in my opinion, EVERYTHING that involves politicians is corrupt by its very nature.
What I thought was funny was that some management was so “pliable” that just being a friend of some politico would have them jumping through hoops to “help” when that person was acting for their own benefit, not at the behest of the politico.
Of course that was how they became management.
Very well said, but I would kindly disagree that ‘older people’ have a problem discerning propaganda from reality. When I was in school, most students would roll their eyes at the guy outside the dining hall who was hawking copies of the ‘Daily Worker’ or whatever that Trotskyite rag was called. Now that crap’s built into the curriculum.
Yes. The marxists control education now.
Dennis
Thumbs up
How certain are you that your judgement is sound? It has been my experience that when someone paints with such a broad brush that it is usually appropriate to characterize it as being something along the lines of ageism or racism. That is, one single superficial quality supposedly defines the character and behavior of all members of the group that possess that quality.
It has long been held that people acquired wisdom with age. You seem to believe that your observations have disproven that. Any chance that your biases are coloring your conclusions?
When I read posts here, almost everyone who was not suckered by the global warming BS are older people, so I call BS on older people, in general, having problems discerning propaganda. Of course, that does not include old liberals, since they have been gobbling up propaganda their whole lives.
Trump is Putin’s bitch, and has been for more than two decades. If Americans believe that Biden caused Putin to invade Ukraine, they’re stupid including the author of this post, who is clearly Biden deranged. Putin owns Trump, Trump repeatedly defended Putin on every bad thing he did for many years going back to the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the “little green men” invasion of Donbas, and defended Putin for his attacks on our election system in 2016 which clearly benefited Trump .. and gave away deadly secret intelligence identifying specific allied agents operating in Russia, and gave that intel directly to Putin’s ambassador inside the oval office.
And of course just last week Trump cheered Putin for his invasion of Ukraine, calling it “genius” – that is until his own party blasted him for such treasonous speech, then he retracted it over the weekend.
Biden is in many ways not an effective President, but he is no traitor and he has never been Putin’s bitch like Trump has been for more than two decades (Russian oligarchs funded him after American and Euro banks refused to lend him any more money after his six serial bankruptcies in the 1990s.. and they were his main customers for his condos in Miami and New York).
Always interesting to see whether Dr. Jekyll Duane or Mr. Hyde Duane responds on any particular subject.
If the subject touches on Trump in any way shape of form, there is no Dr. Jekyll Duane.
You’ve angrily parroted the tired mischaracterizations of Trump. Right off of MSNBC talking heads junk.
He was never Putin’s anything. He never cheered the “invasion” as genius. That’s asinine of course. He was referring to Putin’s playing Biden.
There was no “attack” on out election system in 2016. That’s foolish Hillary-speak.
Trump never “gave away deadly secret intelligence”.
He also never said neo nazis were fine people.
However, all of the perpetrators of the climate crusade fraud parrot the identical junk you brought.
That says a lot.
I thought Rachel Maddow was on leave?
MadCow is not the only idiot at MSNBC.
Here’s what Trump told conservative radio hosts Buck Sexton and Clay Travis last week: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
The day after he made those comments, he effectively doubled down on them. “They say, ‘Trump said Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions,” Trump told a crowd at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, according to a recording of the event. “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”
Hitler was smart too and if he hadn’t invaded Russia his Reich might still be there now. But he was also F—cking evil. And I thank god he went too far.
Trumps not wrong and he told Putin if he invaded on his watch the Kremlin would burn, any wonder why he invaded the Crimea on ObAma’s watch and Ukraine on Bidens.
So we should pretend that Putin is an idiot, when he isn’t?
I finally figured out today that Duane gets his talking points directly from ROOTS Psaki, every day. He doesn’t need media middle men, he gets the same notes they get at the same time.
https://victorhanson.com/putins-predictabilities/?fbclid=IwAR3hptWDbP8w7a7Z1xnxFxV4H0XLDWhTz7Yzb28u7NskQxYUyd-5fINGtRw
The number of barrels a day that the US imports from Russia is a meaningless distraction, precisely because oil is fungible.
What matters is the fact that since the US is producing less, Russia (along with all the other producers) is able to produce more. It really doesn’t matter who they are selling to.
What also matters is because the US is producing less, prices have risen, which means that Russia (along with all the other producers) are earning more for each barrel they do produce.
The solution is obvious. The US needs to stop shooting ourselves in the foot and resume producing as much as we can.
David,
You said, “Prior to 2002, the US imported less than 100,000 bbl/d from Russia.”
There were some peaks over about 150,000, with some around 200,000 between about 1993 and 2002. Perhaps you should consider re-phrasing that.
That text is referencing the subsequent graph of annual average daily imports from Russia…
Concerning media reports on US oil imports:
I must read different media because I’ve noticed surprise that the US imports ant oil from Russia and wondering why the imports went up so much in 2021. Russia producers nearly tripled shipments of oil to the United States in 2021. In 2020, the United States imported from Russia on average 76,000 barrels per day (bpd), while in 2021, that figure rose to 209,000 bpd, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Russian crude accounts for only three percent of U.S. crude oil imports and about one percent of total crude oil processed by U.S. refineries—Russian crude oil imports are important to refineries on the West Coast and Gulf Coast.
You need a lot more study of Ukrain’es history. The government there has a tradition of being corrupt and some Biden’s were involved. Probably still corrupt. In Eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have been fighting for self-determination for the past eight years. They have been denied any right to even vote on their independence. Zelensky seems to be more of a puppet of the West than representing his own people. The republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the Donbas region (LPR and DPR) declared independence after the 2014 coup in Kyiv that saw the overthrown of Yanukovych who was a native Russian speaking politician from the East.
Yanukovych passed a law making both Ukrainian and Russia recognized languages. Zelensky later passed anti-Russian language laws, affecting the largely Russian-speaking population of the two Donbas republics. Only Ukrainian is the officially recognized language. Donbas has since then been fighting against the Ukrainian government defending their democratic right to vote. Kyiv has branded the two regions as separatist, launching a civil war against their own people that lasted for eight years. Zelensky has allowed shelling of the the Donbas region These are also the ultra-right-wing in Ukraine who Putin wants to be brought to justice. Western nations never defended the people in Donbas and they prefer to ignore the right-wing Ukrainians. There are extremists on both sides. The solution would have been so simple — just allow the Donbas region to vote for their independence.
The imports spiked in 2021 were due to the damage caused by Hurricane Ida. This is clearly explained in the post.
Ukraine didn’t invade Russia.
Russia signed a treaty guaranteeing that it would not invade the newly independent nation if they turned the USSR’s Ukraine based nuclear weapons over to Russia. Ukraine turned the weapons over.
Russia invaded Ukraine (Crimea) in 2014 when Obama was president. They left Ukraine alone when Trump was president. They invaded Ukraine again in 2022 with Brandon doddering around the White House.
How much oil do you get from each ant?
So when Putin says that he will not accept any NATO countries on his border, and has been saying this for months if not years we ignore him. After all the expansion of NATO is only a friendly gesture, [at least we think so. If Mexico asked Putin for troops to be stationed on the US Mexican border that of course would be provocative] . in passing judgment let us not forget how indifferent the west has been to the human tragedy that was created by our involvement in the Middle east; https://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/ and https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1101162. [By some accounts up over 10 million displaces people in Syria alone]
Of most importance in this conflict is the complex history of this region but with so much ignorance of this by the media and government officials [our diplomats etc] not interested i will leave it up to those who care to study the history.
Even if Ukraine did join NATO, it would still be Ukrainian troops in the Ukraine. Troops from other countries would only enter the Ukraine if it were invaded.
Your example is both nonsensical and paranoid.
Dear Mr. Middleton,
Thank you for the excellent article on the petroleum industry.
After reading all the comments in the thread, I didn’t see this question asked (perhaps, because the answer is obvious, but, please know my asking is sincere, not sarcasm).
Q: If the amount of oil we purchase from Russia is “a drop in the bucket,” why is it “needed?”
That is, for the sake of taking away $$ from Russia to hinder their vicious, unjustified, attack on Ukraine, could we in the U.S. not suffer from whatever that translates to in cost to us (say, of higher price per gallon of car fuel)? I would be willing to suffer MORE than that to help Ukraine…
Sincerely,
Janice
P.S. Trivia: I, for one, DID know about the west coast refineries (since I live within 20 minutes of one and 40 of another). 🙂
The volume of oil is needed to meet refinery demand. Whether it comes from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia or Russia doesn’t matter to the refiners. All that matters are the physical properties of the oil, when it can be delivered and the price.
PS… I was being a wee bit sarcastic on west coast refineries… 😉
Thank you for answering (and so promptly, too), Mr. Middleton. Okay. Then, if we don’t need Russian oil, why do we keep buying it from them? If we must pay more for oil from elsewhere, no problem (for those of us wanting to help Ukraine). We will pay that cost.
In other words, please forgive me, but, I still don’t get why we shouldn’t immediately stop buying Russian oil.
🥺
Unless there’s a law, prohibiting the importation of Russian oil and petroleum products, refiners will continue purchasing Russian oil when it suits their needs.
Yes. I guess I misunderstood your article. I thought you were arguing that because:
the U.S. needs Russian oil the U.S. government should not pass a law prohibiting its purchase.
So, from your remarks above, I take it, that you are for such a law.
COME ON, CONGRESS!!
(sigh — the Republicans (not the RINOS) are trying….)
Even if we did pass a law banning the purchasing of Russian oil, it would make no difference.
For the same reason why when China stopped buying Australian coal, it didn’t hurt Australia.
We stop buying Russian oil. Since our oil needs remain the same, we buy more oil from someone else.
That someone else, now needs to buy oil to replace the oil that we are now buying. He turns around and buys the Russian oil that we used to buy.
The only difference is that everybody’s transportation costs are now higher.
If we want to hurt Russia in this department, the only ways to do it are to either stop using oil, or produce more oil. No longer using oil would hurt us a lot more than it hurts Russia, while producing more oil benefits us while hurting Russia. It shouldn’t take a genius to figure out which course to take.
Unfortunately, Biden and most Democrats are not geniuses.
Thank you, Mark, for bothering to take the time to explain.
I was assuming (I need to clarify, here, so that it will not continue to appear that I am that poor a thinker, lol) that this:
someone else, now needs to buy oil to replace the oil that we are now buying
would not be necessary.
That is, I took it as given:
1) the measure would also require that we would produce more oil;
and/or
2) we would buy the oil from someone who has enough oil to sell that they neither need to send another willing buyer somewhere else to buy oil, nor buy some more oil inventory themselves.
Again, grateful for your taking the time to help me. I just wanted to clarify that this is what I was assuming.
Fungible!
The problem with embargoing Russian oil exports is that the world would suddenly be about 5 million bbl/d short of oil.
I don’t know of a quick way to sustainably replace the Russian oil exports.
But Joe just released 30 Million and the rest of the world released 30 million for strategic reserves, so that is good for (cypher, cipher, carry the aht,) 12 days. All is good now.
Brilliant!
+42×1042
Oh man, WUWT is rampant with Russian trolls today. I don’t know if good people here lack experience because they do not seem to recognize them for what they are. Here in Finland we’ve had them for years, and they have become kind of a laughing stock because everyone knows how they work.
Rule number one: they are not one of you. They pretend be, they say “we” and “us”, but they are not. They are from the troll cave:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
We could use a bit of comic relief (given how horrible the situation truly is in Ukraine).
I think many of us feel like “yelling” at those Russian trolls like this cockatoo yelled at the barking dog (first, LOL, he stomps around, getting madder…….. and madder…….. looks to the camera person for help……. then, keeps it under control for a bit……… then (about 1:20) SHUT-UP, shuttety-shut-shut-shut-shut-shut-shut UUUUUUPP!!! 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGkt94OOBUU&ab_channel=raptorboyz960
(published on YouTube)
I think the bird is trying to “talk to the dog in its own language” to get through to it. 😄
Thanks David, brilliant as always. I might say, “You can’t fix stupid, but you can vote him out of office.”
The problem is that this is a commutative equation… Stupid can be voted into office at least as easily as stupid can be voted out of office… 😎
David Middleton
I so enjoy reading everything you write and really enjoy how much humor you bring to it as well, even when I think you are wrong, now if you could just be wrong once that make my compliment a little more powerful.
You say that the West Coast imports oil because geography keeps it from being supplied by (presumably) pipelines.The East coast imports oil and petroleum products because their is not enough infrastructure (presumably pipelines). Both of these then receive their foreign supplies by ship. Correct me if I am wrong but I assume that these coasts are not supplied their needs with US products by ship because of the Jones Act.
That is one factor, the other factor is that the nearest ports are on the Gulf Coast and even those still have to go through the Panama Canal.
But not for the East coast.
Excellent article it needs wide circulation, you know to the average Joe. I can understand that David is exasperated at those who relate Russian imports and halting the Keystone pipeline or that it is Biden’s fault we are importing petroleum products from Russia. Let’s keep all those issues separate for now and discuss them individually.
Number one Russian imports vs Keystone pipeline. How is it acceptable to import petroleum from Russia yet unacceptable to import crude from Canada via Keystone? It doesn’t make sense and people should be upset not so much at the Russian import but blocking the Keystone. They are not totally unrelated.
Number two Biden can not be held totally responsible for the US importing petroleum from Russia. However if blocking imports from Canada was imperative to Biden then why isn’t it imperative to block imports from Russia? Does Biden somehow think Russia’s petroleum will contribute less to global warming than Canada’s? I don’t think even Biden is that stupid.
Third Biden is responsible for making the US more dependent on imported energy by mandating wind and solar, doing his best to shut down coal, blocking leases for oil and gas exploration/ extraction, continuing to block nuclear energy and on and on.
Even the least of us can see that all of these things are inter connected and like it or not I think everything Biden has done is making matters worse not better. You say that in your article. People have every right to be upset and disgusted that we handcuff our own producers and enrich our enemies. And always, always remember average Joe is getting the majority of his info from the main stream media a totally disgraced and unreliable source.
Criminal Invasion, of course the last criminal invasion being Iraq or was it Yemen…….been so many.
The criminal invasion was when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
That doesn’t count, Iraq wasn’t a western country.
+42×1042
If One-Term-Trump was President, Putin would not only have invaded Ukraine, but Trump would have supported him “Because he’s this genius, super smart guy”. Probably also be US boots on the ground fighting alongside the Russians because ‘Nazis’ or something, and everyone here would be applauding him because “Murica’ or something.
It’s shameful what’s happened to WuWT. It used to be a place filled with coherent, logical, well-reasoned and civil argument. Now it’s just a right wing echo chamber, full of red-neck Trumpists who see everything in terms of evil Marxist conspiracies, EU/UN warmongering, the ‘Far Left’. Not a single one of you who make such statements have the slightest clue what ‘Far Left’ means. Supporting abortion or human rights or the notion that the state might in some way look after the less fortunate is not ‘Far Left’! That’s just common decency!
Meh! The whole fecking lot of you are hideous, grotesque and disgusting caricatures of what the rest of the world thinks Americans are. I used to give a shite about climate change and how it was being distorted, people lied to, etc. etc. Not any more. If the Warmists win, it’ll be because you made yourselves irrelevant, and you only have yourselves to blame. Backing Trump because he didn’t go along with the Warmist agenda, while turning a blind eye to the endless list of his egregious thoughts and behaviour exposed you for what you are.
You lost the argument. You could – and should – have won it, but instead, you wrapped up a fairly simple and effective demolition of the Warmist position with the absolute worst kind of right-wing crackpot, numbskull, knuckle dragging, mouth breathing claptrap, and utterly failed to notice that the Eco-Taliban had outsmarted you, cut you off at the pass, and used your own position to relegate you to being an irrelevant minority. And that’s on you. Well done! Trump 2024! Won’t that be great!
You better get used to the future, all electric cars, wind turbines all over the places, sky high energy prices, blackouts and power cuts, and yes, black people, women and minorities in positions of power and authority, dishing out laws and regulations that you hate. Trump in jail, and not the Whitehouse, and yourselves endlessly arguing amongst yourselves, or scutinising plots of data for evidence of tiny discrepancies, and trumpeting your latest findings to… no-one.
Meanwhile, we have war in Europe, civilians being killed en mass, 1 million refugees in the space of a week, thanks to yet another psychopathic, paranoid Russian in the Kremlin. To hell with the lot of you.
NB: FYI – I never come back to read responses to my comments, or reply to those comments. Reply, don’t reply, who cares. Not me.
Biden walks back Putin remark, calls him ‘worthy adversary’ (nypost.com)
President Biden on Monday downplayed his previous description of Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a killer” — calling him “bright,” “tough” and a “worthy adversary” ahead of their upcoming summit meeting.
I wonder if Duane will start calling Biden “Putin’s bitch”, now?
Saying someone is “super-smart” is not to say that person is good.
Saying that someone cleverly took advantage of an opportunity to gain something she or he desired is not to approve of their act.
Ted Bundy and Bernie Madoff were “super-smart.” My asserting that doesn’t mean that I approve of their vile deeds.
You are long on words and short on logic, A.M..
The difference between Obama and Biden was that Obama was academically smart.
So much hatred, so little intelligence. Your hatred of those who don’t believe as you do has caused your brain to rot.
Saying that Putin is smart, means you would send troops to support him? Are you really as irrational as this brain dead statement makes you seem?
Oh yes, the assumption that everyone to the right of Mao is a racist and sexist, has never been true, it is however typical of leftists who can’t think for themselves but still are desperate to believe that they are morally superior to everyone they see.
And in your final act of cowardice, and in typical left wing fashion, you declare yourself too special to waste your time with sub-human types who don’t believe as you do.
Go ahead and leave, you won’t be missed and you weren’t adding anything anyway.
But Mark, you label everyone not at the right hand end of the Republican party ‘leftist’…
(On another note, I have to thoroughly agree with your insightful and honest posts on the Ukraine situation elsewhere…)
Considering the right end of the Republican party is at best center right, being to the left of that, is leftist.
Just a European American Hater. Nothing to see here, move along.
She will come back to see what effect she may have had. She is a liberal hater, she will not be able to help herself. She, why? I am using my preferred pronoun for it.
I especially like abortion is “just common decency”. Hitler and the founder of Planned Parenthood agreed on that. As long as you were killing off the right races.
Was there a private call from the Gov of Hawaii to Biden asking him to leave the Russian oil imports in place? Or was it Newsom?
probably both.
Cut them off and let them get by on solar/wind for a while.
It makes no sense for people to blame Trump or Biden for the fact we are importing Russian oil, they didn’t sign the contracts. Blame free market capitalism. We Actually export about 5 times as much domestic oil as we import Russian oil, so its not like we couldn’t make it up by cutting someone else off. It just made sense economically and logistically.
Speaking of capitalism, I saw a report that Shell snapped up a whole tanker full of Russian oil for $28 versus the spot market price of over a 100. Condemn Shell if you want to but that might have hurt the Russians a lot more than losing A few tanks would.
Indeed, much oil imported from Canada.
The US Gulf Coast is getting heavy oil from northern AB, via the present Keystone pipeline, as refineries there are built to handle it (formerly obtained from Venezuela).