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Hmm. But... Russia has nat gas. Germany wants nat gas. Russia wants to sell it. Germany is willing to buy it. All sounds rather simple and commercial to me

by jarym 6y ago

Hmm. But... Russia has nat gas. Germany wants nat gas. Russia wants to sell it. Germany is willing to buy it. All sounds rather simple and commercial to me. If there’s a concern about Russian influence then the only real solution is to invest further in more diversified sources - eg via The Mediterranean so that multiple supplies exist in the event of geo-political strains.

Tomte 6y ago
Economically it is very simple and beneficial to Germany. There are two foreign-policy angles: The Eastern-European states (mostly Poland and the Ukraine, but also the Baltics) are constantly afraid of Russia. Especially to the Poles it looks a bit like Germany and Russia diving Poland between themselves in WW II. That's the good foreign policy opposition. Then there's the bad one: America. America wants to sell liquid gas from fracking. That gas is more expensive, so Germany builds ports for those LNG ships, but also the pipeline. America warns that Germany makes itself dependent on Russian gas, but that's bullshit. Germany can switch over to American LNG at any time. The infrastructure is there. As soon as Russian gas stops, gets too expensive, or strings are attached, Germany can almost instantly get American gas. The only problem is: America wants to sell their expensive gas right now. And so the impose sanctions, not against Germany, but against everyone remotely connected to that project. It sounds like an exaggeration, but they literally impose sanctions on some janitor working for a port that let a ship enter which was working on that pipeline. And the mayor of the town the port is in. And everyone else.
- sremani 6y ago
  The terms of alliance are you do not enrich the guy we are protecting you from. It is that simple!
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    The US is not protecting Germany against Russia militarily. The US is opposing Russia because it is in the US's interests to oppose Russia Germany is more than able to protect itself against Russia.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      > Germany is more than able to protect itself against Russia. Germany only have ~300 tanks. It is not by any stretch of imagination.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Germany isn't going to fight Russia alone, it's going to fight Russia with the entire EU per article 42 section 7 of the TEU. France has 530 MBTs, Spain 550, and Italy 480. This compares favourably with the 2600 Russian tanks, and with proper logistical backbone, advanced air support, infantry support, and competent missile defence systems, is way more than necessary to stall a Russian offensive. Of course, once the Russian offensive is stalled, Germany alone can vastly outproduce Russia, and that's the worst case scenario. The US is not necessary for Germany to defend against Russia.
  - antientropic 6y ago
    Western countries traded with the Russians during the Cold War so this seems like a weak argument. Where does the NATO treaty stipulate a trade embargo against the Russians?
    - iguy 6y ago
      Trade seems fine, it is being dependent which is potentially dangerous. In the cold war, it was the USSR which was more dependent. Without food grown in North America, they were (IIRC) looking at WWII levels of rationing, in the 80s, which would have made people pretty unhappy. They sold oil to buy this food, but most of the west could have got by without this trade. (Not sure how dependent W.Germany was, at that point.)
      - hef19898 6y ago
        Western Germany got gas from the Sowjets since the 70s. It is more the eastern eurpean countries that risk being in trouble. Using "German energy dependency" is just a straw man. Oh, I have the impression the real reason a commercial conflict between the US and Russia.
  - Udik 6y ago
    You can also say "we lose money and influence if you trade with that guy, so we'll pretend you need to be protected from him".
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    Honestly, the free falling B61 you let us 'participate' in storing and delivering aren't protecting us, they make us a target. So Fuck OFF, will ya?
- iguy 6y ago
  > As soon as Russian gas stops, ... Germany can almost instantly get American gas. Is it really so simple? Even if the domestic infrastructure is identical, you need the port facilities (at both ends, with spare capacity), and you need ships. Anyone know what sort of percentage of the world LNG shipping market today this would be? (To replace the whole Russian supply to Europe, say.) That would influence how easy it is to rent the ships you need. Edit -- quick googling, Nord Stream 1 & 2 each 55 billion m^3/year max, the whole world's LNG fleet about 90 million m^3, liquid is 615 times the density, thus 55 billion m^3 total capacity of gas. So if every single LNG ship made one trip US-DE, that would replace a year of Nord Stream 1 alone. The trip is about 12 days, one way, at 20 knots. Maybe I should google more but I thought lead times were also a constraint -- that gas pipelines are close to real-time, unlike oil, while renting some ships to sail across the atlantic would take a while. Anyone know the details?
  - Tomte 6y ago
    America is building those ports right now, because they have LNG to sell. Germany is building those ports right now, in order to placate the Americans. I have no idea whether it can substitute for the whole of Russian gas, probably not. But for Nord Stream 2, yes.
    - vaduz 6y ago
      Total capacity of the completed Nord Stream 1 (~55 bcma, billion cubic metres per year) and Yamal-Europe (~33 bcma) is barely sufficient to cover the German demand (~88.7 bcma in 2019), assuming no sales to Poland or Austria and other countries on the route of the latter - but one of the swan songs for Germany was the prospect of being the transit country for the remainder of the capacity that Nord Stream 2 was to bring (another 55 bcma!). It would also allow Germany and Russia to exert more political pressure on some of its neighbours, in particular on other central European countries (Poland, Slovakia, Austria) - it is not unreasonable these countries not exactly thrilled about the prospect. Not to mention, it helps in those times when Germany needs to give the finger to the US, of course. Plus there is the little thing that most existing terminals can't accept Q-class ships (i.e. vessels with capacity 200 thousand cubic metres), so it is not exactly possible to replace total demand with LNG - it's actually doubtful if you could even replace the ~9 bcma of Nord Stream 2 gas that was actually earmarked for Germany. We are talking different orders of magnitude here.
- kilotaras 6y ago
  Using "the Ukraine" is heavily discouraged, please use Ukraine instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#Etymology_and_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#Etymology_and_orthogra...
  - Tomte 6y ago
    Interesting, I had no idea. I think I heard the variant without article in German, as well, but I'm not aware of a similar discouragement. The German Wikipedia seems not to have anything on it, as well.
Isinlor 6y ago
Roughly 4% of the money Germany will give Russia will be used to kill Ukrainians and stage wars like in Georgia. Russia spends around 4% GDP on their army. Otherwise, why shouldn't we buy oil e.g. from Islamic State if it manages to reappear?
- nwellnhof 6y ago
  Germany has purchased gas from the Soviet Union throughout the cold war. If it wasn't a problem then, why should it be a problem now? Also companies like Gazprom aren't 100% state-owned and only pay a fraction of their revenue to the Russian state. Your 4% calculation is way off.
  - jgilias 6y ago
    Yes. And the part that is not paid to the Russian state goes to fill the pockets of Putin and his cronies directly. And then is being spent on things like fancy estates in Russia and abroad, as well as mercenaries taking part in conflicts in which the Putin's regime wants to have plausible deniability.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    Of course Germany purchased gas from the USSR throughout the Cold War. Half of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc. What kind of argument is that? But Nord Stream didn't exist back then. And I think that's the really problematic issue for Germany. It's one thing to buy fossil fuels on the open market, and another entirely to lay out tons of infrastructure spending to solidify your dependency on an adversary.
    - vkou 6y ago
      Western Germany purchased gas and oil from the USSR. It's actually a very good argument, because it points out something that most people aren't aware of. Generally speaking, Germany's foreign policy is deeply tied to its energy policy. It's one of the reasons for its interest in renewables. I will also note that, say, Thatcher's UK purchased coal from Warsaw Pact Poland in order to crush strikes by domestic coal miners.
totalZero 6y ago
"It's just business" (or as you phrase it, "rather simple and commercial") is how US manufacturing outsourced itself, and it's also how Germany became dependent upon the largest foreign threat to its region's security.
- iSnow 6y ago
  "It's just business" is also how the USA got interested in protecting Germany's energy independence against German political decisions right when the USA started to have an abundance of fracking gas. The pipe is still a huge problem as it allows Putin to rule over a rich Russia, but the way the last USA hamfistedly tried to strong-arm German politics didn't do any good to US/German relations.
  - avmich 6y ago
    "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." That is, in this case it's so convenient that high goals of protecting democracy align with economical goals of improving exports, it's hard to resist. Pity this "after everything else" keeps painting Americans in a way which limits those same American's goals. It's hard to see behind immediate benefits. Those of us who can and do resist silly temptations, should be supported.
    - iSnow 6y ago
      >It's hard to see behind immediate benefits. Those of us who can and do resist silly temptations, should be supported. Very true, and this is why I am equally skeptical about the German determination to get this through, come hell or high water.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Well, Germany never had fossil fuel since coal wasn't feasible anymore. And even if, German deposits were too expensive to exploit. It became quite political due too, IMHO: - the US wants to sell fracking gas - the previous US admin wanted to show strength against Russia - it somehow became a controversial topic in Germany - Eastern European countries are afraid, maybe rightly so, that now it would be easier for Russia to cut them off (as they did with Ukraine in the past) as soon as Germany and Western Europe wouldn't be affected anymore Russia, and the USSR before that, pretty much respected contracts. The exception being former Sowjet countries not being part of the EU and NATO. And the conflict between the west and Russia affects Ukraine the worst. These diplomatic aspects, intermingled with economic interests, have been badly handled by Germany. That being said, it wouldn't be the first pipeline through the Baltic Sea. There is already a Nordtream 1.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
The "Berliner Zeitung" (local newspaper in Berlin) says that the US has conflicting interests: Trump was pushing a market for liquid gas produced in the US by means of fracking; now Biden wants to get rid of fracking. The newspaper says that this change in priorities is an opportunity for Merkel to push for the project (which she regards as being in the interest of Germany). Still they are quite ambivalent because of the many conflicting interests around it. https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wirtschaft-verantwortung/nord-stream-2-die-pipeline-in-einer-kritischen-phase-li.134356 https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wirtschaft-verantwortung/nor...
- downrightmike 6y ago
  fracking is just a nasty process and destroys water reservoirs. Really isn't worth it just to make the rich richer. But they don't live there and they like nestle, so they want people to buy bottled water.
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    I would guess that Merkel is regarding energy prices as a factor that is driving prices for all dependent products. I guess she is probably trying to optimize this expenditure for the economy of her country.
bzb6 6y ago
It’s the greens’ fault. We should have invested in nuclear. We wouldn’t depend on Russian gas if we had nuclear.
brnt 6y ago
> All sounds rather simple and commercial to me That seems to be because you haven't economic studied history. The Soviet Union used its natural resources, and gas in particular, to exert control over its satellites whenever diplomatic methods failed to achieve desired results. Central European countries have not forgotten this, and it behoves us to understand their experience. Moreover, through the person of Schroeder in particular, Germany already has a lite version of that history. Whatever Putin needed done, he had and used an important lever in the form of gas to make Schroeder dance.
- iSnow 6y ago
  The USSR also has not used gas deliveries as a lever against Western Germany at all.
curun1r 6y ago
They tried to invest in diversified sources. There was a plan to build a pipeline from the gulf states to Europe. Russia turned that idea into a war in Syria and a humanitarian refugee crisis. It’s not as simple as buying it from someone else when Russia views countries that are beholden to them for energy as a geopolitical asset.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jarym 6y ago
  I am sure I read a while ago that there were pipeline projects both via Israel and Turkey? If that were the case then I'd imagine, the combo of Russia, Turkey and Israel as gas suppliers to Europe would be about as diversified as possible to mitigate geo-political risks.
  - curun1r 6y ago
    IIRC, neither Israel nor Turkey were going to be suppliers, but they were needed as part of proposed routes for the pipeline. The natural gas rich areas are in southern Iran and Qatar. Syria stopped the plan, and they said no to protect Russia's interests. And Assad is only still in power because he has Russian protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E2%80%93Turkey_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E2%80%93Turkey_pipeline
- MrRiddle 6y ago
  Yeah, you better provide proof on that claim. It was definitely not Russia who funded “rebels”. And it was SA who funded ISIS.

by jarym 6y ago

Tomte 6y ago

Economically it is very simple and beneficial to Germany. There are two foreign-policy angles: The Eastern-European states (mostly Poland and the Ukraine, but also the Baltics) are constantly afraid of Russia. Especially to the Poles it looks a bit like Germany and Russia diving Poland between themselves in WW II. That's the good foreign policy opposition. Then there's the bad one: America. America wants to sell liquid gas from fracking. That gas is more expensive, so Germany builds ports for those LNG ships, but also the pipeline. America warns that Germany makes itself dependent on Russian gas, but that's bullshit. Germany can switch over to American LNG at any time. The infrastructure is there. As soon as Russian gas stops, gets too expensive, or strings are attached, Germany can almost instantly get American gas. The only problem is: America wants to sell their expensive gas right now. And so the impose sanctions, not against Germany, but against everyone remotely connected to that project. It sounds like an exaggeration, but they literally impose sanctions on some janitor working for a port that let a ship enter which was working on that pipeline. And the mayor of the town the port is in. And everyone else.

sremani 6y ago
The terms of alliance are you do not enrich the guy we are protecting you from. It is that simple!
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The US is not protecting Germany against Russia militarily. The US is opposing Russia because it is in the US's interests to oppose Russia Germany is more than able to protect itself against Russia.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > Germany is more than able to protect itself against Russia. Germany only have ~300 tanks. It is not by any stretch of imagination.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Germany isn't going to fight Russia alone, it's going to fight Russia with the entire EU per article 42 section 7 of the TEU. France has 530 MBTs, Spain 550, and Italy 480. This compares favourably with the 2600 Russian tanks, and with proper logistical backbone, advanced air support, infantry support, and competent missile defence systems, is way more than necessary to stall a Russian offensive. Of course, once the Russian offensive is stalled, Germany alone can vastly outproduce Russia, and that's the worst case scenario. The US is not necessary for Germany to defend against Russia.
- antientropic 6y ago
  Western countries traded with the Russians during the Cold War so this seems like a weak argument. Where does the NATO treaty stipulate a trade embargo against the Russians?
  - iguy 6y ago
    Trade seems fine, it is being dependent which is potentially dangerous. In the cold war, it was the USSR which was more dependent. Without food grown in North America, they were (IIRC) looking at WWII levels of rationing, in the 80s, which would have made people pretty unhappy. They sold oil to buy this food, but most of the west could have got by without this trade. (Not sure how dependent W.Germany was, at that point.)
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Western Germany got gas from the Sowjets since the 70s. It is more the eastern eurpean countries that risk being in trouble. Using "German energy dependency" is just a straw man. Oh, I have the impression the real reason a commercial conflict between the US and Russia.
- Udik 6y ago
  You can also say "we lose money and influence if you trade with that guy, so we'll pretend you need to be protected from him".
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  Honestly, the free falling B61 you let us 'participate' in storing and delivering aren't protecting us, they make us a target. So Fuck OFF, will ya?
iguy 6y ago
> As soon as Russian gas stops, ... Germany can almost instantly get American gas. Is it really so simple? Even if the domestic infrastructure is identical, you need the port facilities (at both ends, with spare capacity), and you need ships. Anyone know what sort of percentage of the world LNG shipping market today this would be? (To replace the whole Russian supply to Europe, say.) That would influence how easy it is to rent the ships you need. Edit -- quick googling, Nord Stream 1 & 2 each 55 billion m^3/year max, the whole world's LNG fleet about 90 million m^3, liquid is 615 times the density, thus 55 billion m^3 total capacity of gas. So if every single LNG ship made one trip US-DE, that would replace a year of Nord Stream 1 alone. The trip is about 12 days, one way, at 20 knots. Maybe I should google more but I thought lead times were also a constraint -- that gas pipelines are close to real-time, unlike oil, while renting some ships to sail across the atlantic would take a while. Anyone know the details?
- Tomte 6y ago
  America is building those ports right now, because they have LNG to sell. Germany is building those ports right now, in order to placate the Americans. I have no idea whether it can substitute for the whole of Russian gas, probably not. But for Nord Stream 2, yes.
  - vaduz 6y ago
    Total capacity of the completed Nord Stream 1 (~55 bcma, billion cubic metres per year) and Yamal-Europe (~33 bcma) is barely sufficient to cover the German demand (~88.7 bcma in 2019), assuming no sales to Poland or Austria and other countries on the route of the latter - but one of the swan songs for Germany was the prospect of being the transit country for the remainder of the capacity that Nord Stream 2 was to bring (another 55 bcma!). It would also allow Germany and Russia to exert more political pressure on some of its neighbours, in particular on other central European countries (Poland, Slovakia, Austria) - it is not unreasonable these countries not exactly thrilled about the prospect. Not to mention, it helps in those times when Germany needs to give the finger to the US, of course. Plus there is the little thing that most existing terminals can't accept Q-class ships (i.e. vessels with capacity 200 thousand cubic metres), so it is not exactly possible to replace total demand with LNG - it's actually doubtful if you could even replace the ~9 bcma of Nord Stream 2 gas that was actually earmarked for Germany. We are talking different orders of magnitude here.
kilotaras 6y ago
Using "the Ukraine" is heavily discouraged, please use Ukraine instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#Etymology_and_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#Etymology_and_orthogra...
- Tomte 6y ago
  Interesting, I had no idea. I think I heard the variant without article in German, as well, but I'm not aware of a similar discouragement. The German Wikipedia seems not to have anything on it, as well.

Isinlor 6y ago

Roughly 4% of the money Germany will give Russia will be used to kill Ukrainians and stage wars like in Georgia. Russia spends around 4% GDP on their army. Otherwise, why shouldn't we buy oil e.g. from Islamic State if it manages to reappear?

nwellnhof 6y ago
Germany has purchased gas from the Soviet Union throughout the cold war. If it wasn't a problem then, why should it be a problem now? Also companies like Gazprom aren't 100% state-owned and only pay a fraction of their revenue to the Russian state. Your 4% calculation is way off.
- jgilias 6y ago
  Yes. And the part that is not paid to the Russian state goes to fill the pockets of Putin and his cronies directly. And then is being spent on things like fancy estates in Russia and abroad, as well as mercenaries taking part in conflicts in which the Putin's regime wants to have plausible deniability.
- totalZero 6y ago
  Of course Germany purchased gas from the USSR throughout the Cold War. Half of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc. What kind of argument is that? But Nord Stream didn't exist back then. And I think that's the really problematic issue for Germany. It's one thing to buy fossil fuels on the open market, and another entirely to lay out tons of infrastructure spending to solidify your dependency on an adversary.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Western Germany purchased gas and oil from the USSR. It's actually a very good argument, because it points out something that most people aren't aware of. Generally speaking, Germany's foreign policy is deeply tied to its energy policy. It's one of the reasons for its interest in renewables. I will also note that, say, Thatcher's UK purchased coal from Warsaw Pact Poland in order to crush strikes by domestic coal miners.

totalZero 6y ago

"It's just business" (or as you phrase it, "rather simple and commercial") is how US manufacturing outsourced itself, and it's also how Germany became dependent upon the largest foreign threat to its region's security.

iSnow 6y ago
"It's just business" is also how the USA got interested in protecting Germany's energy independence against German political decisions right when the USA started to have an abundance of fracking gas. The pipe is still a huge problem as it allows Putin to rule over a rich Russia, but the way the last USA hamfistedly tried to strong-arm German politics didn't do any good to US/German relations.
- avmich 6y ago
  "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." That is, in this case it's so convenient that high goals of protecting democracy align with economical goals of improving exports, it's hard to resist. Pity this "after everything else" keeps painting Americans in a way which limits those same American's goals. It's hard to see behind immediate benefits. Those of us who can and do resist silly temptations, should be supported.
  - iSnow 6y ago
    >It's hard to see behind immediate benefits. Those of us who can and do resist silly temptations, should be supported. Very true, and this is why I am equally skeptical about the German determination to get this through, come hell or high water.
hef19898 6y ago
Well, Germany never had fossil fuel since coal wasn't feasible anymore. And even if, German deposits were too expensive to exploit. It became quite political due too, IMHO: - the US wants to sell fracking gas - the previous US admin wanted to show strength against Russia - it somehow became a controversial topic in Germany - Eastern European countries are afraid, maybe rightly so, that now it would be easier for Russia to cut them off (as they did with Ukraine in the past) as soon as Germany and Western Europe wouldn't be affected anymore Russia, and the USSR before that, pretty much respected contracts. The exception being former Sowjet countries not being part of the EU and NATO. And the conflict between the west and Russia affects Ukraine the worst. These diplomatic aspects, intermingled with economic interests, have been badly handled by Germany. That being said, it wouldn't be the first pipeline through the Baltic Sea. There is already a Nordtream 1.

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

The "Berliner Zeitung" (local newspaper in Berlin) says that the US has conflicting interests: Trump was pushing a market for liquid gas produced in the US by means of fracking; now Biden wants to get rid of fracking. The newspaper says that this change in priorities is an opportunity for Merkel to push for the project (which she regards as being in the interest of Germany). Still they are quite ambivalent because of the many conflicting interests around it. https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wirtschaft-verantwortung/nord-stream-2-die-pipeline-in-einer-kritischen-phase-li.134356 https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wirtschaft-verantwortung/nor...

downrightmike 6y ago
fracking is just a nasty process and destroys water reservoirs. Really isn't worth it just to make the rich richer. But they don't live there and they like nestle, so they want people to buy bottled water.
- MichaelMoser123 6y ago
  I would guess that Merkel is regarding energy prices as a factor that is driving prices for all dependent products. I guess she is probably trying to optimize this expenditure for the economy of her country.

bzb6 6y ago

It’s the greens’ fault. We should have invested in nuclear. We wouldn’t depend on Russian gas if we had nuclear.

brnt 6y ago

> All sounds rather simple and commercial to me That seems to be because you haven't economic studied history. The Soviet Union used its natural resources, and gas in particular, to exert control over its satellites whenever diplomatic methods failed to achieve desired results. Central European countries have not forgotten this, and it behoves us to understand their experience. Moreover, through the person of Schroeder in particular, Germany already has a lite version of that history. Whatever Putin needed done, he had and used an important lever in the form of gas to make Schroeder dance.

iSnow 6y ago
The USSR also has not used gas deliveries as a lever against Western Germany at all.

curun1r 6y ago

They tried to invest in diversified sources. There was a plan to build a pipeline from the gulf states to Europe. Russia turned that idea into a war in Syria and a humanitarian refugee crisis. It’s not as simple as buying it from someone else when Russia views countries that are beholden to them for energy as a geopolitical asset.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jarym 6y ago
I am sure I read a while ago that there were pipeline projects both via Israel and Turkey? If that were the case then I'd imagine, the combo of Russia, Turkey and Israel as gas suppliers to Europe would be about as diversified as possible to mitigate geo-political risks.
- curun1r 6y ago
  IIRC, neither Israel nor Turkey were going to be suppliers, but they were needed as part of proposed routes for the pipeline. The natural gas rich areas are in southern Iran and Qatar. Syria stopped the plan, and they said no to protect Russia's interests. And Assad is only still in power because he has Russian protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E2%80%93Turkey_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E2%80%93Turkey_pipeline
MrRiddle 6y ago
Yeah, you better provide proof on that claim. It was definitely not Russia who funded “rebels”. And it was SA who funded ISIS.