Due to the variety of beats this tiny website endeavors to follow, we don’t alway have in depth knowledge of topics of interest. So some reader calibration on this article about the US attempts to stymie Russian LNG exports is very welcome.
It is not hard to discern that author Simon Watkins has a pretty serious case of Putin/Russia derangement syndrome. That does not necessarily mean he is wrong, but his claims need to be assessed for completeness and potential under and over statement.
For instance, last December, Russia visited the UAE and Saudi Arabia in a very tight time frame, and then hosted Iran’s head Raisi in Moscow. Simon Watkins’ depicted the speedy Middle East trip as Putin scurrying like a thief in the night, desperate for economic gimmies.
In fact, UAE gave Putin a remarkably lavish, theatrical welcome, as if he were a conquering hero. This is hardly consistent author
❗️Russian flags hang from the streets in Abu Dhabi as President Putin heads to the UAE Presidential Palace.
❗️Russian President Vladimir Putin pays an official visit to Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, December 6Watch the meeting with his UAE counterpart live on Ruptly here. pic.twitter.com/7HrjMJdgJY
— deepankarthish (@deepankarthishb) December 6, 2023
In addition:
⚡️🇬🇧🇸🇦SAUDIS DITCH UK FOR “ISOLATED” PUTIN: Riyadh’s Crown Prince MBS cancelled London visit just before he met Putin, salty UK officials reveal.
🪫 Brits, questioning health of UK-Saudi relations, call Crown Prince’s decision to delay potential December 3 London trip and host… pic.twitter.com/kcokSwguLP
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) December 9, 2023
And:
After the Russian President’s visit, the Middle East is serious about “getting rid of the West’s domination of world affairs.”
This is how the Crown Prince of Oman put it at a meeting with Vladimir Putin on December 7. pic.twitter.com/YBvdOAOst0
— FreeRangeBum (@Free_Range_Bum) December 10, 2023
The post also contains some remarkable statements like “That is, Russia expected Europe to do absolutely nothing meaningful to sanction its aggression” with respect to energy consumption. Even more revealing is “This determination to never again allow the European Union states to just roll over in the face of Russian aggression….” So much for even the pretense that European states are sovereign.
The US is not looking all that strong in other theaters. Scott Ritter admittedly likes to make his anti-globalist case in awfully bright colors. Nevertheless, in a recent interview with Garland Nixon, Ritter argued that the US and France had been trying to and had been largely successful in stymieing development in Africa, both for multinational profits where obtainable, and in other cases, to crush competition, and that African nations are finally running the colonialists out. He discusses Niger and other cases at some length, and the role of Russia in selectively helping African states in this exercise.
In other words, Watkins’ “the US will never stop” triumphalism seems way overdone, particularly in light of America’s success rate in delivering on other commitments, like backing Ukraine for as long as it takes.
By Simon Watkins, a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, and later Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal. He was then Head of Weekly Publications and Chief Writer for Business Monitor International, Head of Fuel Oil Products for Platts, and Global Managing Editor of Research for Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Originally published at OilPrice.com
- LNG has become the most important swing energy source in an increasingly insecure world.
- Energy exports remain the foundation stone of Russia’s essentially petro-economy.
- Russia’s LNG industry is closely associated in Russia with President Vladimir Putin personally.
Perhaps even more than its targeting of Russian oil exports, the U.S. has been laser-focused on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector as they key area it wants to effectively destroy over the long term. Last week’s suspension of Russia’s flagship Arctic LNG-2 project by lead operator Novatek is the latest of Washington’s trophies in this regard, but it is very unlikely to be the last.
As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt said on 24 April: “[Novatek] has recently had to suspend production at its Arctic LNG-2 liquefaction facility, in part because of sanctions that the Biden administration has led.” He added: “We’re going to keep tightening the screws […] We’re going to continue to designate a broad range of entities involved in development of other key energy projects, future energy projects as well, and associated infrastructure including the Vostok Oil Project, the Ust Luga LNG Terminal, and the Yakutia Gas Project.” So, why is the U.S. so concerned about Russia’s LNG sector?
The first of four key reasons is that LNG has become the most important swing energy source in an increasingly insecure world. Unlike oil or gas that is transported through pipelines, LNG does not require years and vast expenses to build out a complex infrastructure before it is ready to transport anywhere. Once gas has been converted to LNG, it can be shipped and moved anywhere within a matter of days and bought reliably either through short- or long-term contracts or immediately in the spot market.
Around a year before the Kremlin ordered the first Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, China foresaw the critical significance of global energy dependency, as extensively discussed in my new book on the evolving dynamics of the global oil market. So, beginning in March 2021, a 10-year purchase and sales agreement was signed by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and Qatar Petroleum (QP) for 2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG. This was followed by several other major LNG deals prior to Russia invading Ukraine.
In the zero-sum game of emergency global energy supplies, China’s hoarding of LNG prior to the 2022 invasion meant that Europe – critically dependent on Russian gas and oil – would be even more exposed if these supplies suddenly stopped. Russia had been banking on this to produce the same response from Europe to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine as had occurred after its 2008 invasion of Georgia and its 2014 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea.
That is, Russia expected Europe to do absolutely nothing meaningful to sanction its aggression. The Kremlin was nearly right in its calculations, with the effective leader of the European Union (E.U.) – Germany – only concerned about ensuring its own continuity of gas and oil supplies from Russia in 2022 at all costs, as also analysed in detail in my new book on the new global oil market order. Its acquiescence to Russian hostility yet again was only stopped when the U.S. with U.K. support in Europe and the Middle East worked to establish new emergency supplies of LNG from elsewhere. This determination to never again allow the European Union states to just roll over in the face of Russian aggression due to their over-reliance on Russian energy is the second key reason why the U.S. continues to mercilessly target its LNG sector.
The third reason is that energy exports remain the foundation stone of Russia’s essentially petro-economy and that it was intending to counterbalance the reduction of income from pipelined oil and gas with rises in LNG supplies. Indeed, according to comments from its Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak on 22 November last year, Russia intended its LNG market share to rise to 20 percent (at least 100 million tons per year) by 2030, from the current 8 percent (around 33 tons in 2023). As also analysed in my new book on the new global oil market order, Russia earned nearly US$100 billion from oil and gas exports during the first 100 days of the war in Ukraine. Overall, revenues from the higher post-invasion oil and gas prices were much greater than the cost for Russia of continuing to fight the war.
However, as prices started to weaken again and sanctions increasingly hit Russia, its finances and ability to secure an outright military victory have been significantly reduced. So desperate has the situation become for President Vladimir Putin that he risked arrest in December to visit Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, to plead for greater cuts in OPEC oil production in order to push prices up. Again, in the zero-sum game of the global energy market, Russia’s LNG losses from sanctions will be a gain for the U.S. and those LNG suppliers it regards as allies, which now includes Qatar. As it stands now, the Emirate will account for about 40 percent of all new LNG supplies across the globe by 2029, according to comments from its government. The U.S. has seen its LNG exports go from zero before 2016 to around 124 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year, and it is expecting another 124 bcm to come online by 2030. Meanwhile, according to the International Energy Agency, Russia’s share of internationally traded natural gas is forecast to fall from just around 30 percent in the year before it invaded Ukraine to about 15 percent by 2030. Its revenue from natural gas sales is projected to drop from around US$100 billion in 2021 to less than US$40 billion by 2030.
The fourth and final reason why Washington is so determined to effectively destroy Russia’s LNG sector over the long term is that it is an industry so closely associated in Russia with President Vladimir Putin personally. He has long seen LNG – particularly from the country’s huge gas resources in the Arctic – as the key to Russia’s next major phase of energy growth, rather as shale oil and gas was for the U.S., as also detailed in my new book on the new global oil market order.
The Russian Arctic sector comprises over 35,700 billion cubic metres of natural gas and over 2,300 million metric tons of oil and condensate, the majority of which are in the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas, lying on the south side of the Kara Sea. According to comments by Putin, the next few years will witness a dramatic expansion in the extraction of these Arctic resources, and a corollary build-out of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) – the coastal route of which crosses the Kara Sea – as the primary transport route to monetise these resources in the global oil and gas markets, especially to its key geopolitical and financial ally, China. Such was Putin’s determination to move ahead with Russia’s Arctic LNG projects that various heavyweight Russian entities were inveigled around the time the U.S. imposed its 2014 sanctions to finance key parts of them. The Russian Direct Investment Fund, for example, established a joint investment fund with the state-run Japan Bank for International Cooperation with each contributing half of a total of about JPY100 billion (then US$890 million) to it. The Russian government itself bankrolled Arctic LNG 1 from the beginning with money from the state budget. It then supported it again when sanctions were introduced by selling bonds in Yamal LNG (the first part of the Arctic LNG programs), and then by providing another RUB150 billion of backstop funding from the National Welfare Fund.
“LNG does not require years and vast expenses to build out a complex infrastructure before it is ready to transport anywhere.”
Like all U.S. Propaganda, it does not even pretend to be objective. The most Expensive energy for retail consumption is transforming natural gas into a liquid state (LNG), building specialized ships who’s only job can be transporting the liquid bomb aboard the boat, building de-liquification plants to re-gasify LNG. All Very Expensive and Time-consuming.
For old, wobbly, forgetful Uncle Sam, the likelihood of the USA running out of Frac Gas and Oil is far, far more the case than Russia running out, and Russian running out of needy customers.
How can an article on LNG claim the UK and US convinced German-led Europe to diversify energy supplies with LNG and not mention blowing up Nordstream!
Mr Watkins is a very silly man.
Because “Russians did it!”…
I shouldn’t have bothered when I read, Forex trader.
Silly and infected (like so many others) with a bad case of “Putin/Russia Derangement Syndrome” and a bit of ethnocentric Imperial Hubris.
With a huge ego!
That stuck out to me too. Apparently all one needs to do is blink once and the gas is extracted, blink twice and it’s delivered. /s
To anyone not a moron, a commodity requiring two phase changes before consumption is clearly more complicated than sending ready-to-use gas through a pipeline.
I think that the main reason is that the US is now the largest exporter of LNG and intends to use that to keep the EU dependent on them for it. Bonus points because they are selling it for top dollar but now the EU is screwed. That being the case, any country – in this case Russia – that competes in this market must be curtailed unless they play ball.
USA has basically been behaving like an energy drug lord since WW2.
A proper mafia nation…
Yes, but that gives the Mafia a bad name. At least the Mafia does not murder women and children and then pose as a democracy that values freedom and human rights – they are more honest in that regard. (and we can add the US’s Jr. Partner in Crime: the UK)
More like UK is the “retired” godfather.
After all, the whole bruhaha with Iran started over BP oil wells.
Lol, true -they had to get rid of the democratically-elected govt. of Mossadegh.
The UK acting as “retired Godfather” now acting as Consigliere and support crew. Didn’t Scott Ritter say it was the British SBS who orchestrated the destruction Nordstream?
As kam above said, how long the fracked gas will last for?
Europeans are being prepped for the real big prize. Once the EU has firmly stapled livelihood of all 500m Europeans to the teat of the US LNG racket, the real parasite will only then come to play: US MIC.
Just imagine how many educational, health and social projects can be scrapped to give way to the biggest Ponzi in the world. The MIC where nothing works but still costs an arm and a leg and then the other arm and the other leg.
I think this is absolutely right. The US cannot resolve its current account deficit with China because China has constructed an impregnable strategic and economic rampart against US predation (of which Russia is a key part). Thus frustrated, the US must perforce resolve its deficits, at least in part, by extracting wealth from Europe by charging elevated LNG prices. As European suasion over the Global South has now largely collapsed, the dependence of the Europeans on key raw materials from North America and Australia will increase, and it will allow the US, Canada and Australia to charge ever higher prices.
This ramp is vitally important for the US, because it enables the US to keep financing its deficits at a discount, just as extracting/extorting wealth from the Europeans helps moderate the growth of US current account deficits. However, the corollary of this process is that the West cannibalises its own prosperity. The question is when, and if, the Europeans will wake up and comprehend what is being done to them. My guess is that they will not, until it is far too late, chiefly because the war in Ukraine will be used by the US to distract attention and coerce the Europeans into permanent strategic dependence. Moreover, the war can also be used to force the Europeans to increase defence spending (at the expense of investment and social welfare) so as to relieve pressure on the US current account still further. Thus, just as higher energy prices enable Russia to finance its war, so the transfer of capital from Europe to the US helps the US to finance its war and its other military projects (such as in the Levant). The current probability is that the weaker Europe becomes, the more craven and abject its dependence upon the US will become, and the more paranoid its politics.
It now seems to me to be clearer that US grand strategy – the eastward expansion of NATO (and the EU) was not so much intended to contain and coerce Russia (it was, but that was perhaps a secondary consideration); it was rather to dilute Franco-German control of the EU and to provoke hostility from Russia in order to restore European dependence upon the US. The analogy is with Malcolm Yapp’s assessment of British India: the justification for the existence of the large Indian Army was declared by the Raj to prevent a Russian or Soviet invasion of India, but this was merely a political ruse to conceal the real intent, which was to have the Army function as a reserve police force which could coerce the Indian people. Thus Russia is an imagined threat, but it has to be provoked to the extent that it is perceived as a real threat (even if it is probably no such thing), in order to provide political cover for splitting Europe permanently and thus increasing transfers of European wealth to the US (and especially to US energy producers and defence contractors).
Europe is being played, and Ukraine is the lever which enables that play to happen. The more protracted the conflict and the deeper European Russophobia (and Sinophobia) becomes as a result, the more economically convenient it becomes for the US. ‘Allies of a kind’, as Christopher Thorne once remarked.
This year LNG prices in Europe are only twice higher than NG price in USA, and given costs of liquifying and transporting, this is rather low, and many times lower compared to the time when Germany was buying for ANY price. Strangely, the prices of NG are at historical low. The problem for producers is that it is hard to get fracked oil without gas. This makes building gas pipes to every new well unprofitable, and gas is increasingly flared.
It’s always fun to read Simon Watkins. He studiously avoids any mention of the NordStream explosion, but he does manage to slip in three plugs for his new book. Oil and gas constitutes roughly 17% of RU’s GDP, so it is indeed a petro-economy as long as one ignores the other 83% of it.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1322102/gdp-share-oil-gas-sector-russia/
Prediction: the sanctions will spur RU to develop the necessary technology for further development of its LNG sector. Lots of money to be made, and RU has plenty of engineers and scientists. And I imagine that China will be happy to lend a hand.
This tech is developed by China too, I wander to what degree they coordinate.
I count 4 plugs for his book – in fact the article read a thinly veiled book advertisement.
“…its 2008 invasion of Georgia…”
IIRC, two different international bodies confirmed later what a neighboring nation and individuals present at the border said, that Georgia turned its joint peacekeeping mission troops in South Ossetia, long occupied by Russia but once again disputed after 2003 insertion of Western-owned government in Georgia, against the Russian peacekeepers, sent other regulars into South Ossetia- and then got their buts kicked across the whole of the Georgian-Russian bordrer. With a NATO invite in there somewhere.
Not exactly a Prague ’68, let alone an “I’m bored, let’s roll tanks unprovoked across a border somewher” situ.
Or am I mixing it up with some other NATO-inspired microagression in the runup to Ukraine?
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/europe/07georgia.html?ref=world
November 7, 2008
Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question
By C. J. CHIVERS and ELLEN BARRY
Newly available accounts raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that it acted defensively against Russian aggression.
Thanks!
I figured I’d do some fact checking while reading, but got stuck in the first paragraph: Novatek has not suspended Arctic LNG2 project, but will limit it to two liquefaction modules instead of three. The third one is being constructed in Murmansk, and will be installed on another Novatek project platform.
Novatek is also ordering new vessels to transfer the LNG from Arctic LNG2 so everything should fall in place by the end of this year and all the designed capacity will be in use by Novatek. Russian companies adapting to the sanctions is hardly a “trophy” Washington has in mind, me thinks.
I mentioned it previously here in the context of Germany, but it is important to realize that those sanctions ostensibly directed against Russia end up affecting allies of the USA as much. Thus:
1) Novatek had ordered LNG tankers from South Korean naval construction firms. The work on these vessels is now stopped. Worse: one tanker was almost completed and the South Korean shipyard does not know what to do with it, since it was designed for Arctic conditions and another customer for that kind of vessel could not be found.
2) The construction of LNG terminals in Russia has stalled — as mentioned in the article — but it also means that the French and South Korean firms that were involved are out of luck.
3) Other countries (such as Japan or Germany) may have to renounce the LNG supplies after cancelling contracts with Russia providers, or because trading firms in Cyprus (with Russian capital) are now sanctioned as well.
A more balanced report of Arctic LNG2
https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/russian-lng-2-construction-yard-welcomes-final-module-and-arrival-hundreds-chinese-workers
Blinken was obviously very peeved by Chinese help, so rushed off to Beijing, where he was told where to go.
As Russia is busily building a fleet of ice ships I doubt it will be long until LNG2 can operate all year round.
The US will target Russian LNG because it can.
Because, it has to? As permafrost & polar ice-cap melts, Russia & Canada’s gas will widen the gap; as slick-water fracking & US LNG export become exponentially costlier? “Bridge fuels,” including shale oil, gas, bio-mass, hydrogen, ethane cracking are likely to drag down a lot of very well connected & politically active, early speculators? Typically, we’ve sacrificed a generation ofUkranians, for Albright’s pipe dream?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/ERP-2024.pdf
No, because the United States seeks to harm or spite any country that does not take orders, and it does so in any way that it can.
When Katrina took out Shell’s MARS TLP & hit most of US’ deep-water gas, we’d been calling friends, out of concern. Apparently, NONE of us thought of slick-water fracking as anything but a pretty obvious Ponzi scheme that’d unleash a methane Kraken of run-away AGW as side drilled well-bores failed & were abandoned, spewing methane and fracking brine; that US media & regulators would be all over any perpetrators (as Bush lost the House?)
But can it? In a year, five, or ten? Throwing around power carelessly and needlessly because “it can” at the moment is a surefire way to a rapid decline.
The US has been doing so with impunity for decades.
That was then.
We’ve found that pushing Russia was a loser that built them up to be the most powerful military on the planet. Helping the Israeli genocide looks likely to get us pushed out of the ME. Pushing China might force us out of the China sea, possibly even shaking loose our Asian Allie’s… even oz might eventually realize the most butter is on the Chinese side of the bread. And pushing the Houthis is showing the world the days of gunboat diplomacy is over.
Only decades. It was only two centuries ago that proto-Canadians sacked Washington DC. Things change.
I agree with the consensus here about the article. Sorry to be annoying but: One small pedantic issue in the use of terms: “globalist”. I don’t really know what that means. Alex Jones seemed to have popularized that term many years ago, but we have perfectly good words in standard English to describe this. The “globalists” are not global: they are Euro-American imperialists.
I would call Scott Ritter an anti-Imperialist. (Sam Clemens/Mark Twain was also an anti-imperialist). Ron Paul, for example, outlined how the US constitution set up the US as a republic, not an empire. Ron Paul is also an anti-imperialist.
I suspect the usage of “Globalist” comes from here.
It is as you say, Western imperialism. It’s trying to rebrand itself as a law of nature using market ideology and NATO to encourage reality to go along.
It isn’t working so well anymore.
Irony is that from a nationalist utilitarian POV, the US should have an LNG export ban. (arguably so should Russia except for China and maybe Africa)
Nat gas is too useful of a basic material to export in its raw form.
Export fertilizer or industrial goods that use cheap domestic nat. gas as an input—widgets higher on the value ladder
The author suggests that the EU is more energy-secure with the US controlling its energy supplies than with Europe being dependent on discounted Russian LNG or natural gas.
Wasn’t it the US that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered natural gas from Russia to Germany, thereby making Europe less energy-secure? And won’t European industries pay the cost of the lost Russian subsidy?
The Americans and Brits start from the premise that they are moral and competent and then simply assume that what follows reflects this morality and competence.
Surprise. It never does.
“The Americans and Brits start from the premise that they are moral and competent and then simply assume that what follows reflects this morality and competence.” The Anglo élites are totally Basil Fawlty when it comes to self-awareness. Their essential characteristics are that they are malign, incompetent and are incapable of dealing with reality. They can’t even carry water without dropping the bucket. Hopefully, in the fullness of time, the Rest will save the West from the wastelands of their own folly. Or not, as the case may be.
Re: NordStream
This is a very interesting development:
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/04/17/uk-insurers-refuse-pay-nord-stream/
I rest my case.
Author is yet another AngloMurican Masonic-Zionist Schill whose Line of work is under threat from Russian Prosperity.
That’s always been the Western Hegemony’s Hoarding-Plunderer Plan: To Own or Control as much as Possible.
AngloMurica can’t compete against Russia – they have PIPELINES to China and BLU/TRKStream to Southern Europe/Club_Med (€URoGarten Central are in the Process of Asphyxiating Themselves).
FYI – Before Blinken was employed at State as a Flunky AgitProp Editor, he wrote a lame WhitePaper at School advocating blowing up Soviet Hydrocarbon Pipelines…
His Father was a Soros Exec of their Hungary Branch, IIRC…
Also, RUS Hydrocarbons – including LNG – are cheaper(including transport). Murica can get by with Germany+Vicinity over a Barrel. Children’s Book Author/FinanceMin/VicePM Haebeck whined about the higher costs of FreedomFrack_LNG; but Haebeck and MktXchg Friends have been trying to destroy the Long-Term Direct Supplier-Consumer Contracts to favor the SpotMkt on the TTL Nederlands €URopa Xchng.
Greedy AND Stupid. This is why we saw Scholz and Haebeck fly over to the Gulf with Hat in Hand awhile back.
Also, Gazprom announced about 6Months ago that they’ve actually been finding MORE NatGas Reserves than what they’ve been producing – for the past EIGHTEEN CONSECUTIVE YEARS.
IIRC, they’ve claimed that they had over ONE HUNDRED YEARS’ WORTH of NATGAS at current production rates…
AngloMurica/Trans-Atlantic Hegemony Conquest Oligarchs are Indeed Triggered. They can’t cut Russia or China Off from the “Essentials”; and China are going to obtain and consume much more volumes of Hydrocarbons to run their Industries and Agricultural Operations – at far lower cost bases than what AngloMurica can conjure up.
Author’s Projecting his Trader Paranoia. More Hydrocarbons are going to “exchange hands” – on Non U$D/GB£/€UR bases – through China/Russia/UAE/KSA/OPEC-GCC/BRICS+ than through AngloMurican/€URoGarten Xchngs…
ΟΕΔ
Yet another reason is that the US corporate establishment think tank crowd have failed to develop a coherent and sustainable energy policy.
The Americans and the British have been wrong about everything as far as Russia is concerned and for 20 years at least. Russia, Iran and Qatar own 70% of world LNG supplies, they’ll always find a home for it. Russia and Iran have already agreed to exploration and transportation deals, if Qatar decides to join thats the biggest cartel on the planet. Russian LNG is as clean as you like, from out the ground into your heating system, as they say. Zero refining needed, looking at the US they arent even in the game, they can’t even provide the amount required by Europe and Biden went running to the Qataris to beg for more in 22 (as did Scholz) They politely declined to pump more and lose money. US will end up selling at inflated proces to their captured western audience, thats 12% of the global population, Russia will be pumping all over Eurasia, China, the South and Africa. No one will know whose LNG they are buying as it gets shipped through a plethora of pipelines so boycotts are irrelevant (the cap hasnt worked and Russias shadow fleet will join Chinas shadow fleet (which already accounts for 80% of world transport shipping.) Im not 100% sure but last time I heard, with Russias quickly diversifying economy, oil and gas constitute only 27% of Russias income, I can remember when it was 41%. All the sanctions, caps and insurance boycotts havent effected Russia who sells less gas but makes more money. If the US wants to affect that theyre going to have to bring the world price down and they are never going to do that. More projection, more wishful thinking, the article is junk like all US media about Russia.
the article doesn’t make much sense. Russia has plenty of natural gas. It can be sold by pipeline or processed into LNG. LNG is just a packaging of the product, but then it obviously cost quite more than the raw stuff flowing in pipelines. Main potential customers are Eurasians, on land mass around Russia.
And this topological fact is the reasons for pipelines….
USA is, like UK, a maritime empire, and as such with the logistic constraints.
USA can’t keep very long profitability with LNG from fracking, while Russia needs to do nothing, just wait for customers to come begging for gas.
EU has put itself in an insane position: it buys expensive LNG shipped overseas instead of just using pipeline from around the corner.
Sanctions mean that USA can threaten potential customers IF they buy in US$. Other than that, USA could use brute force against countries known for buying Russian (gas or whatever) in other currencies, but then this will undermine USA credibility. It’s no longer free market when countries are forbidden to use the currency they want, and not US$.
These gringos should take some holiday and travel to Murmansk, and have a look at the expanded haven for the newer generation of ice-breakers. The Northern route goes entirely coastal inside Russian waters. Direct routes EU-Asia goes through Russia, anything else has more obstacle through many borders. The Mediterranea-India corridor isn’t going well and can be easily disrupted.
This statement is false, LNG requires expensive infrastructure for transportation, loading and unloading, it can’t just be put on a ship and sent to wherever it is wanted. It is also, primarily, a by product of the oil industry, just as is plastic, the see it as a separate entity is to miss very important points. the primary drive of the USA is to increase its market share of oil and its by products along with the marketing lie that somehow gas is less polluting than oil
quote
‘ Unlike oil or gas that is transported through pipelines, LNG does not require years and vast expenses to build out a complex infrastructure before it is ready to transport anywhere. ‘