Essay by Eric Worrall
As Germany braces for extreme economic and social hardship, it is worth reflecting on the misery the empty promises of green energy advocates have delivered.
Germany girds for gas rationing, Europe on edge in Russian standoff
By Joseph Nasr and Vera Eckert
- Europe fears Moscow will turn off gas supplies
- Kremlin says rouble payments a good idea for other commodities
- Kremlin says it will not immediately demand roubles for gas
- Economic standoff raises risk of recession in Europe
BERLIN/FRANKFURT, March 30 (Reuters) – Germany triggered an emergency plan to manage gas supplies on Wednesday under which Europe’s largest economy could ration power if a standoff over a Russian demand to pay for fuel with roubles disrupts or halts supplies.
…
Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz by phone on Wednesday that nothing would change for European partners and payments would still be made in euros and transferred to Gazprom bank, a German spokesperson said. read more
Separately, Putin outlined the rouble plan in a phone call with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Draghi’s office said.
…
INDUSTRY FIRST IN LINE FOR CUTS
Berlin’s unprecedented move is the clearest sign yet that the European Union is preparing for Moscow to cut gas supplies unless it gets payment in roubles. Italy and Latvia have already activated warnings.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck implemented the “early warning phase” of an existing gas emergency plan, where a crisis team from the economics ministry, the regulator and the private sector will monitor imports and storage.
Habeck told reporters Germany’s gas supplies were guaranteed for now but urged consumers and companies to reduce consumption, saying that “every kilowatt hour counts”.
If supplies fall short, Germany’s network regulator can ration gas, with industry first in line for cuts and preferential treatment for private households, hospitals and other critical institutions.
…
Who feels like opening a new business in Germany? When will the wind mills deliver the abundance and low costs green advocates keep promising?
Who still believes renewables are “cheaper than coal”?
It could all have been so different. If Europe had embraced nuclear power and fracking, they could have laughed off Putin’s gas supply threats.
I would like to report that Europe has woken from its delusions, but despite my early hopes, the messages are mixed. Politicians still haven’t got the balls to admit they were wrong. There has been some recommissioning of coal, but not nearly enough. The public line is any recommissioning of fossil fuel infrastructure is temporary.
Wake up Germany and Europe. You have a few short months of Summer to figure out how you will survive the coming energy supply crash. The one chance your politicians have to redeem themselves for decades of policy failures is to make this right. Because if that Russian gas supply goes down in winter, and you are still unprepared, some of your people freeze to death.
Update (EW): Fixed a typo (h/t Bob Tisdale)
There’s a gas shale basin under half of Germany. If they had fracked this they wouldn’t be in the mess they are now.
Fraking destroys the nature.
No, it doesn’t. Do some research.
But it improves energy security and standards of living
More chance of windmills and solar farms destroying nature. I’m developing the view that Herr Muller is typical of the greenie zombie that has invaded German logic.
Peter Mueller, Wind turbines you place by cutting down old German forests destroys nature. A one acre (half a hectare) drill pad in that same forest to go down maybe 8000 feet before turning horizontal for over a km followed by perf and frack does NOT. You really need to learn about this stuff before such spouting nonsense here. (If sarc, you forgot the /s)
Enjoy freezing in the dark next Winter.
Actually it doesn’t. Is there anything that you are paid to believe, that is actually true.
Says the guy from the country that is razing entire ancient forests to make more of the useless windmills that have quadrupled the cost of power and made you reliant on Putin’s gas to back up the stupidly expensive intermittents you jackasses think can power a modern industrial civilization even though electricity storage at the scale required is non-existent and in fact impossible….all while doing absolutely nothing to reduce emissions.
Meanwhile, the US has cheap power (except where warmistas have taken over) due to fracking, and lowered costs while lowering our emissions to pre-1990’s levels, and using zero tax money to do it.
Fool!
German people used to be smart and tough.
Obviously that is no longer even close to being true.
All the ones with a brain left, and all the tough ones got killed from trying once or twice too many times to take over the entire planet for yourselves.
Peter Müller destroys logic and intelligence.
How so?
Just how far are you willing to go to help Putin?
There are next to no gas deposits under Germany – plenty of poor quality coal, but very little gas. If they had fracked this they would have had just enough gas to keep them going for, maybe, 10-11 months then zip.
That is what they said about undiscovered fossil fuels underneath the US, up until even cognitive dissonance could not block the truth from their minds.
Maybe but it is, unfortunately, true. Germany has massive amounts of coal in the ground but virtually no gas.
And how much actual looking for it has been done?
A large part of the reason the US has so much of this resource in the category of proven reserves, is because a lot of time and money and effort has been expended in looking for it by people who knew they can make money if they find it.
Does the US really have a uniquely huge amount of nearly every energy resource known, or have we spent a lot more time and effort to locate what is under the ground?
I am sure they answer is, some of both.
How many test wells have been fracked in Germany?
How extensively has the underground geology been drilled and mapped?
glim.jpg (4860×3322) (the-geophysicist.com)
The same formations under Poland are known to known to contain a huge resource:
World-map-Unconventional-gas-a-global-phenomenon-World-Energy-Resources.jpg (1200×806) (worldenergy.org)
The entire history of known amounts of fossil fuel resources is one of continuous vast underestimates.
For over 150 years, we have used ever more fossil fuels of an expanding variety and extraction methodology.
We use vastly more now that ever, and yet reserves have expanded far faster all the while, such that we now have more than ever, no matter what metric one uses to describe the reserves.
We have more in amount, and more in years of usage at present rates of extraction.
How is this possible?
Because the more drilling and digging is done to extract, the more money is available for exploration, and the more is located and added to inventories.
In countries and locations where there is no fossil fuel companies doing any exploration, it should hardly be surprising that very few unexploited resources are known to exist.
I do not know specifically about Germany, but what you are saying sounds exactly what many people were saying about the US not too long ago.
The world has vast amounts of energy in the rocks under our feet.
And in the sediments under the oceans and seas.
“To this date, one test drilling using the hydraulic fracturing technology in shale rock was conducted in Germany in 2008 (Damme 3, Lower Saxony). ExxonMobile also published the chemical composition of the frac fluids used in the 3 frac treatments. The test drilling was conducted to achieve an estimate of the production potential of the existing shale rock formations. However, there are no final results as of now (annual report, LBEG, 2012).”
Shale gas in Germany – the current status: SHIP – Shale Gas Information Plattform (shale-gas-information-platform.org)
They have oil shale as well as shale gas, and estimates of the total resource cover a huge range and are of low confidence.
IOW, no one knows how much there is because very little investigation has been done to find out.
And as I said above, even in places that have what are considered very well done inventories, known reserves and resources are in almost all cases increasing over time, even while the stuff is being extracted at an ever faster pace.
There are billions of years of buried sedimentary rocks under the ground, and many places have miles deep sedimentary layers and only spotty to sparse efforts to find out what is down there.
Even in recent years while the US had gone from the largest net importer to an exporter of oil and gas, I have been reading long articles written by seemingly well informed and knowledgeable experts, from every imaginable angle on the subject, explaining at length and in great detail, how the amounts of gas and oil to be had by fracking are a hill of beans, impossible to make a profit on, hugely expensive for a well that has a steep falloff in production almost from the day it is opened, etc.
But in spite of all of this, it is obvious we have vast amounts of recoverable oil and gas under our country, more than anyone knows, and many large areas and entire regions that have never even begun to be tapped or even investigated closely.
No one knows how much is under Germany, because no one has looked carefully and the government there has no plans to allow extraction and hence no reason to have a look.
1f4d882851096501eadc728992c82dae–shale-gas-sites.jpg (736×512) (pinimg.com)
A study by German government geologists said there was significant amount of gas recoverable from fracking. Possibly enough to supply the country for 20 years..
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL8N15A2SN
Echoing previous studies, it estimated the amount of gas available from fracking to be 0.3 to 2.3 trillion cubic meters. Germany used 0.1 trillion cubic meters of gas last year, 95% of which was imported.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-germany-russian-gas-2022-03-08/
When it comes to the Green Blob, rationing is a feature not a bug.
Gas is to be paid in rubles. Hostile countries open a bank account t Gazprom, they can put euros there. Euros are sent on the international exchange for rubles and final payment is made in rubles.
We don’t need no steenkin’ roublz !
Probably no country has spent more trying to eliminate fossil fuel reliance than Germany but fossil fuels still supply around 75% of energy consumption, wind only 4%.
back in Feb
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine
“Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored
Ted Galen Carpenter
It has long been clear that Nato expansion would lead to tragedy. We are now paying the price for the US’s arrogance”
“Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state, similarly described the Russian attitude. “Many Russians see Nato as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the west should not do the same.” It was an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer”
Putin has been wanting to rebuild Russia to the Soviet era lines since he first took office. It’s odd that people don’t understand that, because he has said it repeatedly.
No NATO country wants any of Russia’s territory. Ukraine wants Crimea back, likely Georgia wants its territory back, and Japan would like its northern islands back.
The only country that is eyeing Russian territory for their own expansionist agenda is China.
Repeat, 𝗻𝗼-𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗮. Russia is the expansionist threat, and that is the reason NATO exists. Period.
Only fools like Putler and Xitler, leaders of authoritarian regimes still stuck in the 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝗳 “𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗿𝘆” by conquering and subjugating smaller nations, continue with the expansionist agendas. Individual citizens now, and serfs or peasants of earlier times get/got no benefit from expansionism … rather, they just pay the price.
In free societies, the purpose of government is to defend the rights of its individual citizens. Truly democratic countries don’t start wars against other truly democratic countries. NATO is only a threat to Russia if Russia is intending to start wars and conquer territory.
Here is former economic advisor to Putin, 𝗔𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘆 𝗜𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗼𝘃, explaining the situation on TRIGGERnometry.
I should look back at the transcripts of Clinton and Yeltsin phonecalls. Yelstin pleading with Clinton to stick to his agreements. The US were out to fleece Russia.
Russia called the attack on Ukraine pre- emptive- the same as the US attack on Iraq that Kofi Annan called illegal.
An attack the west has been warning would happen with expansion of NATO-
To:
Joint Chiefs of Staff | NATO – European Union Cooperative | National Security Council | Russia Moscow Political Collective | Secretary of Defense | Secretary of State
Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns.
5. (C) Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
the rest in the link –
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html#efmBTnBfi
Clinton not living up to his agreements.
You say that like it was something unusual.
Are you really this desperate to try and justify Putin’s murderous actions?
Russia replaced the Warsaw Pact with the CIS in 1991, long before NATO expansion. Blaming the west is deliberate ignorance.
and yet all the evidence is the West warning that expansion would lead to hostilities with Russia. Even, Biden, on camera in 1997 warming of the same.
What you consider to be evidence is mighty fluid.
BTW, I love the way you bounce to new lies each time an old one is shot down.
“It has long been clear that Nato expansion would lead to tragedy. We are now paying the price for the US’s arrogance”
Putin is the one doing the attacking, not the U.S.
“They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the west should not do the same.” It was an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer”
Well, it ought to be obvious why NATO didn’t disband. They are there to try to deter the threat from Putin and others like him.
Putin is the bad guy here, not the U.S. and not NATO.
And the US has been involved in many illegal wars- Kofi Annan said the 2003 attack on Iraq was illegal-
The US called it pre-emptive.
Russia called the attack on Ukraine pre- emptive. An attack the west has been warning would happen with expansion of NATO- https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html#efmBTnBfi
The 2003 attack was legal as a continuation of Desert Storm after Iraq repeatedly and egregiously violated the cease-fire agreement.
Kofi Annan stated it was illegal. “The invasion of Iraq was neither in self-defense against armed attack nor sanctioned by UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force by member states and thus constituted the crime of war of aggression, according to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva”
Isn’t that precious, you actually believe that Annan is definitive on this subject.
And there we go again. One lie shot down, and two more sent up.
if all the experts in the field predicted what would happen with expansion of NATO how can Putin be the bad guy, surely the people who gave guarantees are to blame or are we in a situation where we make a guarentee and then break it on a whim-
“Russia agreed to German reunification only after German Chancellor Helmut Kohl convinced Gorbachev that NATO would not expand toward Russian borders”
If everyone predicts that a mass murderer will continue to murder, does that excuse the murders?
Surprise, surprise, the far left and the idiot environmental groups all support Putin. It’s amazing how many friends money can buy.
Chickens. Roosts. ROTFL!
The only thing that changes misguided behavior and its underlying values and attitudes is consequence…particularly so if it is hard enough to threaten life or limb. These utopians need a good hard jolt of reality…bring it on!!!
Right now on French channel 26 (LCI) they are babbling about
Totally delusional…
There goes your standard of living. The greens will be the last to admit the evolving consequences starting with recession or should we say stagflation.
The UK is going to be in trouble as well as without a shadow of doubt there will be no power available on the inter-connectors. The UK has become reliant on them with their unreliables and they will have to do load shedding (aka localized rolling blackouts).
OFGEM recently completed a study on the work they would need to do to expand interconnectors massively. I actually submitted a response of my own to their consultation. Reading the subsequent report, I find that they used mealy mouthed words to acknowledge the points I made, and I found that many of the problems I foresaw had not occurred to them, or in too many cases, to people in the industry. Lack of supply in Europe wide Dunkelflaute being just one of them.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2021-12/ICPR%20Decision%20Paper.pdf
Sucked in Germany, payback for WW2.
Sadly, it is often necessary to learn the hard way from insane activism driven mistakes.
What sort of insanity is this? What have we done to oursleves? Allowed us to be sold down a river of green BS! When the hell are we going to wake up and say no! When wre we going to put a stop to this madness!
Everyone knows CO2 is a benefit to the planet, the warming is mild to non detectable, and the effect on plant growth staggering!
End this eco nightmare!
Who knows, maybe what the US were angling for, they were unhappy Germany was moving towards , Russia, creating a power house-
“CEO of Germany’s multinational BASF SE, the world’s largest chemical producer, has warned that curbing or cutting off energy imports from Russia would bring into doubt the continued existence of small and medium-sized energy companies, and further would likely spiral Germany into its most “catastrophic” economic crisis going back to the end of World War 2. ”
In the end it’s kapustki for the massive push of green energy.
Your paranoid fantasies are growing ever more elaborate and disconnected from reality.
so decades ago Germany should have kept on with fossil fuels (including presumably gas), with the foreknowledge some Russian nutjob would start a pointless war?
Just imagine if they didn’t have all that wind and solar…
how’s it working for them today?
the country is about to collapse – solar and wind unicorns are not going to help them.
No. Decades ago, Germany should have kept on with fossil fuels because anyone with half a brain would be able to see that Putin would use the leverage he got over other countries to try and force them to allow him to complete his territorial ambitions.
Since the wind and solar aren’t reducing the amount of natural gas needed, absence of said wind and solar wouldn’t make any difference in the current crisis.
Scott Ritter: The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction.
While it might be in vogue for people, organizations, and governments in the West to embrace the knee-jerk conclusion that Russia’s military intervention constitutes a wanton violation of the United Nations Charter and, as such, constitutes an illegal war of aggression, the uncomfortable truth is that, of all the claims made regarding the legality of pre-emption under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine is on solid legal ground.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law-of-war-crime-of-aggression/
Whether they are or aren’t on solid legal ground matters little. What matters is whether certain other countries can win the media and public opinion battle, win support from the rest of the world and crucify Putin in absentia. They who make the rules will determine who has broken them.
indeed , as, Putin stated-
“I understood that the use of force can only be legitimate when the decision is taken by NATO, the EU, or the UN. […] [W]e have different points of view. […] The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN. And we do not need to substitute NATO or the EU for the UN”
Nobody needs to crucify Putin, his actions over the last couple of decades has already done that.
Thank you. Once again you have stepped in to validate one of my posts. Sincerely a big thanks for that, MarkW.
The linked article makes it clear that Russia has no legal grounds. First of all, article 51 doesn’t allow for unilateral action, but states they should bring it to the security council. More importantly, the supposed justification is the fighting in Donbas, which was caused by the Russian invasion years ago. To claim that a full scale invasion is justified by the results of your own small scale invasion is ludicrous.
and yet it is interpreted by an American that Putin has grounds for the invasion.
The US has always seen the need for regime change and finally somebody bit back using the same claims as the US used for its invasions.
According to this, the act of defending yourself is a provocative act that justifies any aggressive act.
Since Ukraine was not attacking the Russia, nor were they making any preparations to do so, Russia’s actions in invading were 100% illegal by any standard.
Due to the polar vortex pattern in the lower stratosphere, cold weather will persist in Western Europe until at least mid-April. There may be nighttime frosts and snowfall, as is currently the case.
Ukraine is not fighting Putin because the West wants it to. On the contrary, Ukraine is fighting for a European, not Eastern, standard of living. It does not want to be another Armenia.
If it had chosen to remain neutral perhaps it could have become another Finland though doubtful as it is totally corrupt.
It is amazing how most of the countries that were dominated by first Russia, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia again, are almost universally corrupt and poor.
The ones that avoided the third step aren’t doing too horrendously. I might tentatively suggest that the ones you are referring too learned the wrong lessons from their occupiers/abusers. Behaviour like that should have been avoided at all costs but, as has happened before, victims sometimes also become abusive.
For many years to come, Ukrainians will be the Kremlin’s greatest enemies. The number of families missing in Mariupol goes into the hundreds. The number of fathers and sons who die at the front goes into the thousands. These are often 19-year-old boys.
The Kremlin has created a lot of enemies for itself by its actions in Ukraine.
Putin has caused serious injury to the Russian people by the atrocities he is committing in Ukraine. People of the world won’t soon forget.
Even France has continued with full trade with Russia. Russia, only has the enemies it already had.
If anything the US has now weakened itself.
Look around the world.
The only countries that have come out in support of Russia have been countries such as China, N. Korea, Iran, Venezuela. A real rogues gallery.
It’s not the list of supporters that interests me really – as you rightly point out, it’s the usual suspects. No it’s the ones who, while paying lip service to sanctions against Russia and actions to support Ukraine, are actually doing bugger all about it and profiting quite nicely.
Like all leftist actions and policies, they are based on doing damage and destruction. They will never look at the consequences because that would mean seeing the truth. And truth to a leftist is like owning the black plague.
It has been clear since the annexation of Crimea what Russia’s attitude toward Ukraine is. Then conclusions should have been drawn. There are also large Russian minorities in the Baltic states, Moldova, etc.
Russia might have the political will to try but, as with Ukraine, it seems to lack the military might to do so.
The environmental movement has been captured and is now just one more tool in the arsenal of sociopathic criminals and thieves who control just about all western governments and who now rule over us.
Just heard that Germany is shutting down more coal plants. Right in the middle of winter! They’re gonna be freezing their buns off when they run out of sunlight, and they run out of wind. Reminds me of the nonsensical thinking that got us into World War II by the German people listen to some fast talking demagogue who thought he had all the answers.
Because if that Russian gas supply goes down in winter, and you are still unprepared,
somemillions of your people freeze to death.Fixed it for you.
The framing is in full swing in Germany: The Ukrainian war leads to a catastrophic rise in price of gas and oil.
My own energy bill raised from 105€ a month to 272€ in November 2021, long before the war. The impact will be really felt when landlords will calculate the new payments for heating, usually in April/May.
The war is a godsent opportunity to blame the catastrophic impact of the worst energy-policy in the world by far on somebody else.
100%
The polar vortex pattern in the lower stratosphere is the dog and the jetstream is the tail.
Frost during the night in Western Europe. Possible snowfall.