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Post by medo on Feb 19, 2008 18:24:14 GMT -5
Hope you are right bacause after reading this http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net./Geopolitics___Eurasia/Peak_Oil___Russia/peak_oil___russia.html Russia will definately be in the yankz sites. Interesting article. But first, I must say that I always feel very sick when I read analysts openly and without any scruples and hesitation talk about conquering of countries for their natural resources. Yes I know that stories about " democracy" and " human rights", so far used as excuse for aggressions for oil or military bases, are bullshits but at least they do not produce this sickness, at least not to such an extent. My blood pressure in my head goes to the skies when I read something like this: " With the huge demand for oil from China and now India, it becomes a geopolitical imperative for the United States to take direct, military control of those Middle East reserves as fast as possible" One might think that spoken words are not important, but I strongly disagree! The words shape our minds, and the words turn human being into monsters! If we easily accept words which coldly advocate banditism and stealing of wealth from other peoples just for ones own benefit then I think the world shall come to its end! We must not tolerate such language even on paper! Words shape the mind and the mind shape our actions in the real world! If we easily accept the bad language and the bad words poison our minds it shall weaken our spirits! And we cannot fight in the real world with weak spirits! Now, about the article: I agree that in these circumstances TIME is Russian and Iranian ally. More time passes Russia shall become stronger and stronger and the west weaker and weaker. And both Russia and the West are fully aware of this. But I am almost 100% certain that this time, after the western aggressions on Serbia (1999) and on Iraq (2003) the spirit, essentially important for the people to fight, is very strong in Iran and very weak in the west. No one could expect today the people to stand and wait and allow to be caught on cheap stories about " democracy" and " human rights". No one could expect the people to believe in things such as " international laws" and UN! Especially these days when we see what happened in Serbia. What we, common people, can catch by reading " between the lines", is that neither Russia nor Iran stand and wait doing nothing. In fact it is known that Russia and Iran cooperate on many issues in technological sphere for at least a decade! A lot of knowledge is transfered and Iran is a fast learner! After Iran massively enriches uran for quite some time, and after it has been clearly visible to the whole world that Iran has technology to send satellites into orbits I think that the West faces very, very clear message -> it shall cost them a lot! Regarding Russia it is absurd even to think about military confrontation between Russia and the West since it shall not be the end of the West but instead of the whole world. That war would certainly by the end of the civilization since it would not be fought with conventional forces from the very beginning to the very end. Even bacteria and planktons wouldn't survive (radiation). I think that the West is wild but certainly not insane! After all they are cowards (this has been proven both in Iraq and Afghanistan) and this is good for them. In some cases lack of courage prolongs life! |
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Post by wiking on Feb 19, 2008 18:44:40 GMT -5
Hey people... I mean children... don't you understand politics at least a litle bit? Some of you write comments about " Islamic scum", " sad news" etc... But this is a good news! And it is also good that Gazprom and the Russian state regains control of all of its oil and gas fields! And Iranian-Russian alliance and strategic partnership is also a good thing, not only for the countries but also for the whole world, since it helps the collapse of the Evil Empire. The reason why I posted this thread is to make fun with the comic noise recently coming from the West that Russia allegedly " has again failed in Kosovo", " Russia has no guts" etc... Such rubbish is for little children! If the Westerners think that " Russia is weak" and " Russia has failed" etc... why don't they free Georgia or Moldavia??? They just bark for the last 15 years and have no guts! The point is, as I wrote a couple of times here -> there are many, many indications that the Americans tried to bargain with Russia over Kosovo and Iran. But it is good that Russia rejected such proposals! It is good for Russia, it is good for Serbia too! Why it is good even for Serbia? Because if the Yanks saw that Russia was too emotional for Serbia they could find another excuse and bomb Serbia again (or maybe even try to nullify the Serb republic in Bosnia) and use yet another occupied Serbian province in another blackmail bargain. By rejecting such proposals Russia send the clear message that it shall not bargain with anything the West took illegally! Russia could help Serbia by selling it arms, but prior to that Serbia has to recover mentally since currently Serbia's spiritually sick and completely destroyed by the pro-Western media and pro-western NGO's and pro-western parties in Serbia. My intention was to show that the West shall not achieve what it intended at first place -> they shall not be allowed to use the occupied provinces throughout the world for later bargains with Russia or China! Regarding your comments about Islam, Slavs should be in good relations with Islamic peoples! Conflict between Serbs and some Islamic peoples in the Balkans is not a religious conflict but instead an ethnic one! Strong Iran is good for all the righteous and just people! I read that Iranian president congratulated Serbian nationalist Tomislav Nikolich, who is demonized in the western press, when he was elected for president of the Serbian parliament (but this was revoked due to the pressure from the West). Both Slavs and oppressed, humiliated and exploited Muslim people in the Middle East have the same enemy -> the West. Therefore Slavs and Muslims should stick together! I don't not understand politics. I'm just stubborn. Muslims will never be our allies. The only allies Slavs should have are other Slavs. Islam is a disgusting religion fit only for semitic people and muds. It has no place in our society, and allying ourselves with them shows our weakness. The Muslims have no long term goal other than continuing their medieval society undisturbed for another 20 centuries. Meanwhile they're sitting on all this oil. Like I said before, they should be conquered, enslaved, and robbed of their resources. |
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Post by kjakrakieta on Feb 19, 2008 22:09:09 GMT -5
It serves an even balance between US+Israel and the east Russia+Iran.
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Post by wiking on Feb 19, 2008 23:11:27 GMT -5
And yet...
"Gazprom has threatened to cut Ukraine's gas supply today in the afternoon by a quarter if Kiev fails to pay off debts incurred from precious supplies."
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Post by kjakrakieta on Feb 19, 2008 23:55:41 GMT -5
what did you expect? business as usual
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Post by CHORNYVOLK on Feb 20, 2008 0:37:23 GMT -5
what did you expect? business as usual I expected the Polish brothers to help out Ukraine and pay her debts since they like to advise them so much. ;D  |
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Post by medo on Feb 20, 2008 14:47:30 GMT -5
And yet... "Gazprom has threatened to cut Ukraine's gas supply today in the afternoon by a quarter if Kiev fails to pay off debts incurred from precious supplies." Wow! This is very, very strange! Ukraine does not pay the gas, and it admits that it hasn't paid the gas received, and Gazprom threatens to stop delivering gas??? You must be kidding! This very, very unusual. In the West when a buyer does not pay the western companies continue to deliver the goods, and they never stop delivering the goods even when the buyer does not pay.... Shame on Gazprom! P.S. Speaking about West it is good that Ukraine has a fraternal nation on its western borders, namely Poland, and Poland shall pay for Ukraine. Thank God Ukraine has Poland to rely on! |
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Post by wiking on Feb 20, 2008 19:41:28 GMT -5
My point was that they're in bed with the Iranians but are letting the Ukrainians freeze. And why would Poland and not Russia give them aid?
Whatever.. I don't even care. Between your broken English and excessive use of sarcasm I can't even tell when you're serious.
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Post by CHORNYVOLK on Feb 20, 2008 20:45:50 GMT -5
My point was that they're in bed with the Iranians but are letting the Ukrainians freeze. And why would Poland and not Russia give them aid? Whatever.. I don't even care. Between your broken English and excessive use of sarcasm I can't even tell when you're serious. Would you be giving billions of dollars to a friend (Ukraine) who wants to join your enemy (Nato) ? |
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Post by CHORNYVOLK on Feb 19, 2008 16:39:17 GMT -5
Confessions of an “ex†Peak Oil Believer
By F William Engdahl, September 14, 2007
The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil anytime soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist.
On a personal note, I’ve researched questions of petroleum, since the first oil shocks of the 1970’s. I was intrigued in 2003 with something called Peak Oil theory. It seemed to explain the otherwise inexplicable decision by Washington to risk all in a military move on Iraq.
Peak Oil advocates, led by former BP geologist Colin Campbell, and Texas banker Matt Simmons, argued that the world faced a new crisis, an end to cheap oil, or Absolute Peak Oil, perhaps by 2012, perhaps by 2007. Oil was supposedly on its last drops. They pointed to our soaring gasoline and oil prices, to the declines in output of North Sea and Alaska and other fields as proof they were right.
According to Campbell, the fact that no new North Sea-size fields had been discovered since the North Sea in the late 1960’s was proof. He reportedly managed to convince the International Energy Agency and the Swedish government. That, however, does not prove him correct.
Intellectual fossils?
The Peak Oil school rests its theory on conventional Western geology textbooks, most by American or British geologists, which claim oil is a ‘fossil fuel,’ a biological residue or detritus of either fossilized dinosaur remains or perhaps algae, hence a product in finite supply. Biological origin is central to Peak Oil theory, used to explain why oil is only found in certain parts of the world where it was geologically trapped millions of years ago. That would mean that, say, dead dinosaur remains became compressed and over tens of millions of years fossilized and trapped in underground reservoirs perhaps 4-6,000 feet below the surface of the earth. In rare cases, so goes the theory, huge amounts of biological matter should have been trapped in rock formations in the shallower ocean offshore as in the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea or Gulf of Guinea. Geology should be only about figuring out where these pockets in the layers of the earth , called reservoirs, lie within certain sedimentary basins.
An entirely alternative theory of oil formation has existed since the early 1950’s in Russia, almost unknown to the West. It claims conventional American biological origins theory is an unscientific absurdity that is un-provable. They point to the fact that western geologists have repeatedly predicted finite oil over the past century, only to then find more, lots more.
Not only has this alternative explanation of the origins of oil and gas existed in theory. The emergence of Russia and prior of the USSR as the world’s largest oil producer and natural gas producer has been based on the application of the theory in practice. This has geopolitical consequences of staggering magnitude.
Necessity: the mother of invention
In the 1950’s the Soviet Union faced ‘Iron Curtain’ isolation from the West. The Cold War was in high gear. Russia had little oil to fuel its economy. Finding sufficient oil indigenously was a national security priority of the highest order.
Scientists at the Institute of the Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Ukraine Academy of Sciences began a fundamental inquiry in the late 1940’s: where does oil come from?
In 1956, Prof. Vladimir Porfir’yev announced their conclusions: ‘Crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths.’ The Soviet geologists had turned Western orthodox geology on its head. They called their theory of oil origin the ‘a-biotic’ theory—non-biological—to distinguish from the Western biological theory of origins.
If they were right, oil supply on earth would be limited only by the amount of hydrocarbon constituents present deep in the earth at the time of the earth’s formation. Availability of oil would depend only on technology to drill ultra-deep wells and explore into the earth’s inner regions. They also realized old fields could be revived to continue producing, so called self-replentishing fields. They argued that oil is formed deep in the earth, formed in conditions of very high temperature and very high pressure, like that required for diamonds to form. ‘Oil is a primordial material of deep origin which is transported at high pressure via ‘cold’ eruptive processes into the crust of the earth,’ Porfir’yev stated. His team dismissed the idea that oil is was biological residue of plant and animal fossil remains as a hoax designed to perpetuate the myth of limited supply.
Defying conventional geology
That radically different Russian and Ukrainian scientific approach to the discovery of oil allowed the USSR to develop huge gas and oil discoveries in regions previously judged unsuitable, according to Western geological exploration theories, for presence of oil. The new petroleum theory was used in the early 1990’s, well after the dissolution of the USSR, to drill for oil and gas in a region believed for more than forty-five years, to be geologically barren—the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the region between Russia and Ukraine.
Following their a-biotic or non-fossil theory of the deep origins of petroleum, the Russian and Ukrainian petroleum geophysicists and chemists began with a detailed analysis of the tectonic history and geological structure of the crystalline basement of the Dnieper-Donets Basin. After a tectonic and deep structural analysis of the area, they made geophysical and geochemical investigations.
A total of sixty one wells were drilled, of which thirty seven were commercially productive, an extremely impressive exploration success rate of almost sixty percent. The size of the field discovered compared with the North Slope of Alaska. By contrast, US wildcat drilling was considered successful with a ten percent success rate. Nine of ten wells are typically “dry holes.â€
That Russian geophysics experience in finding oil and gas was tightly wrapped in the usual Soviet veil of state security during the Cold War era, and went largely unknown to Western geophysicists, who continued to teach fossil origins and, hence, the severe physical limits of petroleum. Slowly it began to dawn on some strategists in and around the Pentagon well after the 2003 Iraq war, that the Russian geophysicists might be on to something of profound strategic importance.
If Russia had the scientific know-how and Western geology not, Russia possessed a strategic trump card of staggering geopolitical import. It was not surprising that Washington would go about erecting a “wall of steelâ€â€”a network of military bases and ballistic anti-missile shields around Russia, to cut her pipeline and port links to western Europe, China and the rest of Eurasia. Halford Mackinder’s worst nightmare--a cooperative convergence of mutual interests of the major states of Eurasia, born of necessity and need for oil to fuel economic growth--was emerging. Ironically, it was the blatant US grab for the vast oil riches of Iraq and, potentially, of Iran, that catalyzed closer cooperation between traditional Eurasian foes, China and Russia , and a growing realization in western Europe that their options too were narrowing.
The Peak King
Peak Oil theory is based on a 1956 paper done by the late Marion King Hubbert, a Texas geologist working for Shell Oil. He argued that oil wells produced in a bell curve manner, and once their “peak†was hit, inevitable decline followed. He predicted the United States oil production would peak in 1970. A modest man, he named the production curve he invented, Hubbert’s Curve, and the peak as Hubbert’s Peak. When US oil output began to decline in around 1970 Hubbert gained a certain fame.
The only problem was, it peaked not because of resource depletion in the US fields. It “peaked†because Shell, Mobil, Texaco and the other partners of Saudi Aramco were flooding the US market with dirt cheap Middle East imports, tariff free, at prices so low California and many Texas domestic producers could not compete and were forced to shut their wells in.
Vietnam success
While the American oil multinationals were busy controlling the easily accessible large fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and other areas of cheap, abundant oil during the 1960’s, the Russians were busy testing their alternative theory. They began drilling in a supposedly barren region of Siberia. There they developed eleven major oil fields and one Giant field based on their deep ‘a-biotic’ geological estimates. They drilled into crystalline basement rock and hit black gold of a scale comparable to the Alaska North Slope.
They then went to Vietnam in the 1980s and offered to finance drilling costs to show their new geological theory worked. The Russian company Petrosov drilled in Vietnam’s White Tiger oilfield offshore into basalt rock some 17,000 feet down and extracted 6,000 barrels a day of oil to feed the energy-starved Vietnam economy. In the USSR, a-biotic-trained Russian geologists perfected their knowledge and the USSR emerged as the world’s largest oil producer by the mid-1980’s. Few in the West understood why, or bothered to ask.
Dr. J. F. Kenney is one of the only few Western geophysicists who has taught and worked in Russia, studying under Vladilen Krayushkin, who developed the huge Dnieper-Donets Basin. Kenney told me in a recent interview that “alone to have produced the amount of oil to date that (Saudi Arabia’s) Ghawar field has produced would have required a cube of fossilized dinosaur detritus, assuming 100% conversion efficiency, measuring 19 miles deep, wide and high.†In short, an absurdity.
Western geologists do not bother to offer hard scientific proof of fossil origins. They merely assert as a holy truth. The Russians have produced volumes of scientific papers, most in Russian. The dominant Western journals have no interest in publishing such a revolutionary view. Careers, entire academic professions are at stake after all.
Closing the door
The 2003 arrest of Russian Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of Yukos Oil, took place just before he could sell a dominant stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil after a private meeting with Dick Cheney. Had Exxon got the stake they would have control of the world’s largest resource of geologists and engineers trained in the a-biotic techniques of deep drilling.
Since 2003 Russian scientific sharing of their knowledge has markedly lessened. Offers in the early 1990’s to share their knowledge with US and other oil geophysicists were met with cold rejection according to American geophysicists involved.
Why then the high-risk war to control Iraq? For a century US and allied Western oil giants have controlled world oil via control of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Nigeria. Today, as many giant fields are declining, the companies see the state-controlled oilfields of Iraq and Iran as the largest remaining base of cheap, easy oil. With the huge demand for oil from China and now India, it becomes a geopolitical imperative for the United States to take direct, military control of those Middle East reserves as fast as possible. Vice President Dick Cheney, came to the job from Halliburton Corp., the world’s largest oil geophysical services company. The only potential threat to that US control of oil just happens to lie inside Russia and with the now-state-controlled Russian energy giants. Hmmmm.
According to Kenney the Russian geophysicists used the theories of the brilliant German scientist Alfred Wegener fully 30 years before the Western geologists “discovered†Wegener in the 1960’s. In 1915 Wegener published the seminal text, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, which suggested an original unified landmass or “pangaea†more than 200 million years ago which separated into present Continents by what he called Continental Drift.
Up to the 1960’s supposed US scientists such as Dr Frank Press, White House science advisor referred to Wegener as “lunatic.†Geologists at the end of the 1960’s were forced to eat their words as Wegener offered the only interpretation that allowed them to discover the vast oil resources of the North Sea. Perhaps in some decades Western geologists will rethink their mythology of fossil origins and realize what the Russians have known since the 1950’s. In the meantime Moscow holds a massive energy trump card.
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net./Geopolitics___Eurasia/Peak_Oil___Russia/peak_oil___russia.html
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Post by CHORNYVOLK on Feb 19, 2008 17:02:04 GMT -5
That Russian geophysics experience in finding oil and gas was tightly wrapped in the usual Soviet veil of state security during the Cold War era, and went largely unknown to Western geophysicists, who continued to teach fossil origins and, hence, the severe physical limits of petroleum. Slowly it began to dawn on some strategists in and around the Pentagon well after the 2003 Iraq war, that the Russian geophysicists might be on to something of profound strategic importance.
If Russia had the scientific know-how and Western geology not, Russia possessed a strategic trump card of staggering geopolitical import. It was not surprising that Washington would go about erecting a “wall of steelâ€â€”a network of military bases and ballistic anti-missile shields around Russia, to cut her pipeline and port links to western Europe, China and the rest of Eurasia. Halford Mackinder’s worst nightmare--a cooperative convergence of mutual interests of the major states of Eurasia, born of necessity and need for oil to fuel economic growth--was emerging. Ironically, it was the blatant US grab for the vast oil riches of Iraq and, potentially, of Iran, that catalyzed closer cooperation between traditional Eurasian foes, China and Russia , and a growing realization in western Europe that their options too were narrowing.
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Post by CHORNYVOLK on Feb 19, 2008 17:29:50 GMT -5
Ukraine’s political shift
What changed in the ‘not changeable’ Gazprom-Ukraine contract between August 2004 and January 2006, of course, was not Gazprom but rather the political complexion of Ukraine. The victory of the Washington-financed Yushchenko candidacy for President in December 2004, and his inauguration in early 2005 on a pledge to bring Ukraine into NATO, did not go down well in Moscow, which considers Ukraine historically and strategically a part of ancient Russia—Kiev Rus.
It was also clear to the Kremlin that Yushchenko’s call to bring Ukraine into NATO was no mere election gimmick to distance his party from his pro-Moscow electoral opponent.
Yushchenko’s wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, a Chicago-born Ukrainian-American, had previously served in the Reagan White House and State and Treasury departments, and did liaison work with Afghani and other anti-Soviet US-sponsored opposition groups, such as Bush neo-conservative Zalmay Khalilzad’s Friends of Afghanistan. She also sat on the board of a pro-NATO neo-conservative US think-tank, New Atlantic Initiative, along with Radek Sikorski, Poland’s effusively pro-Washington Defense Minister. Sikorski is a close friend and former American Enterprise Institute colleague of Richard Perle and the other neo-con hawks.
The New Atlantic Initiative was created in June 1996 following the Congress of Prague, where more than 300 conservative politicians , scholars, and investors discussed a ‘new agenda for transatlantic relations.’ The ‘new agenda’ they promoted was quite simply to encircle Russia by bringing the former Soviet satellite states into NATO and into a US-defined ‘free market.’
The New Atlantic Initiative has headquarters in the offices of the neo-conservative base of operations, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC, where Richard Perle, his co -author David Frum, Michael Ledeen, Lynne (wife of Dick) Cheney and Irving Kristol are based. A more hard-core nest of neo-conservative hawks would be hard to find on that side of the Atlantic.
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net./Geopolitics___Eurasia/Putin_s_Gas/putin_s_gas.html
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Post by CHORNYVOLK on Feb 21, 2008 1:15:26 GMT -5
www.kyivpost.com/opinion/oped/28425/Ukraine efforts to bypass Russia met by EU hunt for gas alternative Feb 21 2008, 01:24 One of the main news developments in January was Yulia Tymoshenko’s statement about the intention to build a new gas pipeline together with the European Union called White Stream, which would connect the countries of Central Asia with those of the EU through the Black Sea and Ukraine. The idea, which the media attributed to Yulia Tymoshenko, was in fact developed by American experts led by US Sen. Richard Lugar (R–Ind.). The prototype of such a project evolved at the end of the 1990s and was then known as GUEU (Georgia-Ukraine-EU). Although a decade ago, the GUEU received considerable political praise, potential gas exporters and importers were not as enthusiastic about it. The project has fallen by the way side since then. Tymoshenko twice tried to revive the forgotten project: in 2005, during her first stint as prime minister when she tried to develop an energy strategy, and in the summer of 2007, during the international conference of energy issues in Tbilisi. Tymoshenko’s third attempt to reanimate the project received wide attention because the proposal was addressed to the European Commission, but presented in Belgium without prior agreement from countries in the Caspian region. As expected, European leaders approached the idea with restraint. Energy Commissioner Andrias Pibalgs provided a typically diplomatic response: “We must study this issue in detail, because when the Commission approves and finances certain projects which are technical and economic in nature, it has to be sure that it will continue to support this project in the future.†The representative of the European Commission was tactfully tight-lipped about the fact that the Ukrainian prime minister’s proposition doesn’t fit into the overall Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe (INOGATE) program of the European development plan for an energy transport infrastructure and the assurance of energy security. This plan is very similar in scope to the Nabucco project which excludes a transport route on the territory of Ukraine. In the INOGATE plan, Ukraine’s mission in the context of European energy security is quite clear – Ukraine is to supply Russian gas to Europe by means of its own existing gas transport system. The notion of White Stream has every right to exist, but only if the gas pipeline is not perceived as the only alternative means of transit. More economically effective means of transportation are the liquefaction and compressed methods. Experts at Greece-based EXERGIA and UK-based MOT McDonald, two companies involved in the INOGATE plan, agree with this idea. The reaction of the Turkmenistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Tymoshenko’s statement demonstrates that sellers of energy supplies don’t support the Ukrainian premier’s initiative either: “According to internationally accepted procedures, official announcements about projects regarding the construction of international pipeline systems stem from countries which engage in mining energy resources following a series of negotiations and consultations with other interested parties.†As a result, the Turkmen government’s statement implies that it has no need for new go-betweens to sell its gas. The Ukrainian premier’s initiative comes as a surprise because the government is demonstrating its concern over European energy security in light of its own gas problems. Have we already managed to settle all of our problems regarding the delivery of energy supplies? No, they are still unsettled and soon we are going to have additional problems. Negotiations with Gazprom are scheduled for this month. It’s no wonder President Yushchenko asked the government “not to fix it if it isn’t broken†and not to irritate Russia with statements about new energy projects and tariff increases on the flow of transitory gas on existing routes. After analyzing the situation, the president’s advisers came to a conclusion that the Europeans will not be pleased with an increased transitory gas rate, since for them this will amount to a rise in energy supply costs. Undoubtedly, the presidential secretariat has already noticed a disturbing trend – Europe is beginning to trust Ukraine less and less and doesn’t believe in stable cooperation with Ukraine. This became clear on Dec. 7 of last year when it was announced that Hungary was going to take part in the South Stream gas pipe project co-sponsored by Russia and Italy. The agreement was signed in June 2007. For any risks in energy security, Hungary sees the possibility of "just one supplier or just one pipline.†In an attempt to strengthen its own energy policy, the Hungarian government decided to maintain one reliable partner of gas delivery – Russia, but at the same time to take part in the building of a new gas pipeline. In other words, the “new†one is to act as an alternative to the Ukrainian pipeline, from which Hungary gets Russian gas. So, there you have it – a parliamentary crisis, political instability, a persistent pre-electoral situation coupled with cases of the illegal siphoning of gas from the pipelines. As a result, the Europeans are not so much wary of Russia, but rather the unpredictability of our relations with Russia, more specifically the ramifications of such ambiguity for Europe. Most likely, this is why EU countries take part in the construction of every alternative Russian gas pipeline – both in the South and in the North, thus circumventing Ukraine. This best describes the so-called “exclusive transit potential,†which Ukrainian leaders enjoy boasting about so much. Isn’t it time for Ukraine to finally settle its own energy security problems? It is Ukraine and not the EU which receives gas from one supplier via one old pipe line, which can easily be shut off by Russia. It is time to diversify both the sources and methods of supplying gas to Ukraine, instead of worrying about the guarantee of European energy security. To those who complain that Ukraine doesn’t have its own viable projects, the response is: there are such projects. And there are many: beginning with participation in the Nabucco project and continuing with the construction of gas refineries on the Black Sea coast, the gas supplies which can come from Egypt and the countries of the Persian Gulf. However, due to various political machinations, international visits as well as the upcoming presidential elections, the powers that be rarely find the time to deal with such projects. Leonid Kosianchuk is former director of the Department of Oil, Natural Gas and the Oil Refinery Industry at the Ministry of Fuel of Ukraine.
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Post by czechoslovak on Feb 26, 2008 5:52:03 GMT -5
North Transgas and North European Gas Pipeline; also known as the Russo–German gas pipeline or the Baltic Sea gas pipeline) is a planned natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany by the company Nord Stream AG. The name of Nord Stream refers usually to the offshore pipeline between Vyborg, Russia, and Greifswald, Germany. The project is highly controversial, for both environmental concerns and national security risks. Political aspects Opponents have seen the pipeline as a move by Russia to bypass the transit countries (currently Ukraine, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Belarus and Poland). Some transit countries are concerned that a long term plan of the Kremlin is to attempt to exert political influence on them by threatening their gas supply without affecting supplies to Western Europe. Looks like Russia can also play some games against fellow Slavs. This is not the whole article or the whole story but it sounds sinister. link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_gas_pipeline |
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Post by medo on Feb 27, 2008 1:10:27 GMT -5
North Transgas and North European Gas Pipeline; also known as the Russo–German gas pipeline or the Baltic Sea gas pipeline) is a planned natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany by the company Nord Stream AG. . . . Looks like Russia can also play some games against fellow Slavs. But one has to understand that the political decision to give a green light for the project came after the " fellow Slavs" (and especially Ukraine) refused to accept the western principles of market economy when dealing with Russia in the energy sphere! The " fellow Slavs" thought they would still get Russian gas and oil for four (!!!) and more times cheaper prices from Russia while they would threaten Russia with NATO military bases!?! And what happened? After the " fellow Slavs" decided to join NATO, after the " fellow Slavs" decided to join EU, and after the " fellow Slavs" refused to accept the EU principles of market economy when dealing with Russia, they started to steal Russian gas and oil Russia was delivering to the western Europe. And why did they steal? Because they refused to accept market price of gas, and because they knew Russian response to their stealing would not be very sharp since the " fellow Slavs" had monopoly on the transport of Russian gas and oil to the western markets! Therefore one has to understand that Nord Stream project comes in these circumstances! No one threatens to the " fellow Slavs" by cutting off their gas and oil deliveries! If the " fellow Slavs" intend to pay their own bills to Russia for the gas and oil Russia delivers them they do not have to worry. If they pay the goods they shall get them. However if the " fellow Slavs" intend to blackmail Russia using the monopoly the currently have in the transport, if they do not want to accept the market principles when dealing with Russia, then they certainly have to worry, but this is not the problem of Russia but the problem of the " fellow Slavs". Because in the future neither the " fellow Slavs" nor anyone else shall have the monopoly in the gas and oil transport! I wonder why don't the " fellow Slavs" ask their new masters from the West to give them oil and gas or maybe western automobiles for 4 times cheaper prices? But this is just a rhetorical question.... |
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