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Multiple gas pipelines from Russia are closed because European governments refuse to allow them to run. That's gas sanctions, why do you argue otherwise? For ex

Multiple gas pipelines from Russia are closed because European governments refuse to allow them to run. That's gas sanctions, why do you argue otherwise? For example Germany refuses to open Nord Stream 2, and Nord Stream 1 is broken due to sanctions on equipment repair - the turbines are made by Siemens and several are sitting in UK factories unable to be re-exported back due to sanctions. Although the troubles with Nord Stream 1 are well known, the termination of the other pipelines is less well understood. Poland for example closed the Jamal pipeline due to the war in Ukraine: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/poland-terminates-yamal-gas-pipeline-agreement-with-russia https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/poland-terminates-yamal-gas-... We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways, so at this point even if the pipelines were re-opened and the equipment properly repaired, it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe. Unreliable partner after all compared to China, India and elsewhere. Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately.

kken 4y ago
>Nord Stream 1 is broken due to sanctions on equipment repair It's well known that this is not true. You are perpetuating russian propaganda.
- foverzar 4y ago
  > It's well known that this is not true Well known? Is it? Could you please give some reference then? No one would be surprised to see a "work-to-rule" action, but how is it "russian propaganda" that Europe had sanctioned Russian energy industry and it "somehow" had consequences?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - KronisLV 4y ago
    I don't really care much for the debate, or fully buy into either perspective on the issue, but here's what a quick search turned up, from the 31st of August: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/nord-stream-1-europe-inflation/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/nord-stream-1-eu... > Russian state energy giant Gazprom cut all deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday in what it said was a planned shutdown until Saturday for maintenance work. > In recent months, Gazprom has slashed flows through Nord Stream 1 to just 20% of capacity, citing maintenance issues and blaming Western sanctions on exports of technology imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. > Russia has also cut off supplies to several “unfriendly” European countries and energy companies over their refusal to pay for gas in rubles, as the Kremlin insists, rather than the euros or dollars stated in contracts. European leaders say Russia is trying to blackmail countries over their support for Ukraine. > France’s Engie (EGIEY) is the latest casualty. On Tuesday, Gazprom said it would completely suspend deliveries to Engie (EGIEY) from Thursday, claiming that it had not received full payment from the company for the gas it supplied in July. Someone can probably look up Gazprom's own PR response and see how it matches up (or doesn't) with the statement by Engie, as well as what differs. Most of the time it's good to look up what various sources say, if you're interested in it, and come to your own conclusions. From my perspective, reliance on another country, the relations with which have historically been troubled (and are now further strained, given the geopolitical events), does not seem like the best of ideas - alternative means of securing the resources that are needed for providing electricity/heat are more than welcome.
    - foverzar 4y ago
      Well, these go more or less in line with my impression that European restrictions are the cause of most disruptions of normal operations, from maintenance to payment. Add to that the NS2 pipeline, that could have been started, but never was. And Yamal-Europe pipeline that was shutdown by due to sanctions. Diversification of supply is a good thing, sure, but how would it affect the competitiveness of European industry is a curious matter.
  - marvin 4y ago
    Russian propaganda says that Nord Stream 1 is closed due to repairs. It obviously is not. It is closed because Russia wages economic warfare against Europe. You won't find a peer-reviewed double-blind study saying this, signed by foreign minister Lavrov with an interview in the appendix where he states that this is in fact Russia's deliberate policy choice, but one can use some basic reasoning. The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies.
    - hi_herbert 4y ago
    - foverzar 4y ago
      > Russian propaganda says that Nord Stream 1 is closed due to repairs. It obviously is not. It is closed because Russia wages economic warfare against Europe. You won't find a peer-reviewed double-blind study saying this, signed by foreign minister Lavrov with an interview in the appendix where he states that this is in fact Russia's deliberate policy choice, but one can use some basic reasoning. I don't need peer-reviewed double-blinded study. I need something that has at least a bit more substance than "well known", "obvious" or other argumentum ad populum > The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies. The ground truth is that the US and Europe (for however justified reason) had declared an economic war against Russia (sanctions), which has no means or strength to wage a real economic war of its own. And another ground truth is that they were not properly thought through as 2/4 pipelines are sanctioned and cannot be used, financial operations are sanctioned and cannot normally be performed, technology export and maintenance is sanctioned. All this to disrupt Russia's operations, while Europe STILL depends on it. Replace Russia with any random variable and you would still get the same effect if you don't mind where you shoot and nuke half your own energy market. It doesn't even have any real means to "punish poor Europeans with all it's economic might", otherwise there wouldn't be ANY gas flowing to Europe for months now. Instead Russia simply does absolutely nothing to mitigate Europe's own risks of continuing running operations restricted and sanctioned all around by itself, while still profiting from it. Please stop defending incompetence and labeling every uncomfortable piece of reality as "Russian propaganda".
- origin_path 4y ago
  The broken turbines in question were sent to western factories which repaired them. If they weren't broken it would have been noticed. And recall, the whole point of sanctions was to degrade Russia's industrial capacity by preventing them from repairing things that depended on western parts, so this is very likely a priori. Anyway it doesn't matter. NS2 is there ready and waiting to go, but Germany won't switch it on ... due to sanctions.
  - welterde 4y ago
    Only one turbine and that one is sitting for several months in Germany, waiting for Gazprom to actually request delivery of it. Nevermind that Siemens Energy states that there is nothing wrong with the existing ones and that there is actually a spare turbine sitting in storage on site of the compressor station that could be installed. Everything needed for Russia to continue supplying gas was explicitly exempt from the sanctions. There are another two gas pipelines that are available to Russia (bypassing Poland), which they have also used a bit during the first NS1 shutdown, but they reduced/stopped deliveries via them too - NS2 wouldn't change anything about that either. At this point it's obvious what Russia is trying to do. They went all-in with stopping of the gas deliveries to try to get the West to stop supporting Ukraine. But it looks like they might have played that card too late.
    - origin_path 4y ago
      There were 5 turbines needing to be repaired by Siemens, not one: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanction-exemption-five-remaining-turbines-1.6560744 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanction-exemption-f... And nobody, not the Canadian government, not the British government nor Siemens is disputing that the equipment needed maintenance. Now that's changed and Siemens is claiming it's safe to run a high pressure gas pipeline when the machinery is broken and leaking. That is absurd - if there's one place safety is critical it's right next to a pipeline full of explosive gas. We can safely assume Siemens is under tremendous pressure to support this Ruskies-doing-it-to-us narrative as a consequence. Yes, all the pipelines were closed due to sanctions. Russia was still pumping gas at full speed through one of the pipelines that passed through Ukraine as recently as August: https://www.ft.com/content/8ed4ccdb-522a-4003-8010-1a786af18bbc https://www.ft.com/content/8ed4ccdb-522a-4003-8010-1a786af18... It got shut down because Ukraine could not receive transit fees from Russia due to EU banking sanctions. EU was "looking into it". Their sanctions turn out to block things they didn't intend all the time. If our governments really thought Russia was lying about the equipment they could just authorize NS2 and then say - see? - when no gas flows. They aren't doing that. Instead they blocked all the other pipelines via sanctions and then let the last one break, again due to sanctions. Then having successfully blocked Russian gas they blamed Russia for it, knowing full well after COVID that people will happily swallow almost anything no matter how contradictory it is.
micwag 4y ago
> We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways First point is true, but the second ist not. Germany went out its way to ensure all contracts are fulfilled to avoid this claim. > it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe. Russia very much wants to go back to selling gas and oil to europe, they have after all no other relevant industries and pipelines to China/India don't have the capacity to replace european delivery. > Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately. Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict and to be relegated to a possible chinese puppet state in the future.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?
  - micwag 4y ago
    To quote the state owned russian news agency: > "Repeated case of interference of the Bank of Russia into implementation of the budget rule in terms of foreign currency purchases means that the floating currency rate regime existed from the end of 2014 until early 2018 is ‘only on paper now’ and is actually substituted by regulation of the currency market by the Bank for Russia for the purpose of eliminating threats for financial stability, jeopardized by the budget rule effect," https://tass.com/economy/1026029 https://tass.com/economy/1026029 This was 4 years ago, and is even more so true now. The ruble at the moment is NOT free floating.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    A higher FX is usually neither here nor there and whether it's desirable depends on the makeup of exports vs imports. That's why countries often have a fixed peg instead of a "just make it go up" policy. Russia is the definite loser out of this, and indeed everyone is, the decision to invade was a catastrophe for everyone on multiple levels.
  - 4y ago
phicoh 4y ago
The key thing to remember is that Russia reduced the gas supply to Europe already one year ago. Way before they invaded Ukraine, and therefor before any of the recent sanctions. It is assumed that Russia sent a warning message to EU countries not to interfere. Fortunately, most EU countries recognized that Russia was no longer a reliable supplier. And imposed sanctions, delivered weapons anyhow. Russia thought they could threaten their most important customers. The problem Russia now has, it that there is hardly any capacity to sell gas to other countries. Building pipelines will take many years and will have to happen without western technology (I'm sure Russia would like China to own their pipelines). Or Russia has to build more LNG terminals, but that is also not ideal. And ship from western countries probably won't go there. Of course, the downside of relying to much on Russian gas is that EU countries now have to deal with an enormous energy shortage.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  I think you are reading way too many one sided sources. The Russians are selling more to China and India since the war. The higher price of gas means in the short run they are making more money. Yes, some sanctions might be annoying, in the way a mosquito is annoying to you, but basically nothing europe has done has really had an impact. (Most weapons have come from the US). So while parts of what you say is true, frankly the situation is terrible for Europe, quite bad for Russia, and pretty awesome for the US
  - phicoh 4y ago
    Yes, Russia is selling a little bit more to China and India. Not nearly enough to make up for the reduction in sales to EU countries. In addition, China and India get nice discounts. Yes, Russia makes a lot more money at the moment because the small amount of gas they still sell to EU countries is expensive enough that it nets more money. Anybody who has been following the war a bit will notice that Russia is now seriously running out of modern weapons. By the time tanks from the early 60s show up at the front line, you can be sure something is wrong. At the moment, and due sanctions, Russia has a bit of a production problem. Since the 2014 sanctions, Russia has a bit a problem with obtaining micro-electronics. The effects of that are also quite noticeable. In any case. Over the summer, EU countries managed to fill their gas storage while producing enough electricity to keep most stuff running. So yes, the situation is bad for the economy and EU countries have to figure how to help people pay their energy bill, etc. But if the current situation is 'terrible' then I wonder what word has to be used for a real disaster.
distances 4y ago
You have quite the nerve to spread these falsehoods here, and then claim it's Europe that is the unreliable partner. Amazing and supremely twisted. I have no interest in discussing this with you as you're not here with good intentions, but I would let others know that Western countries were very accommodating with the spare parts, which in practice called the Russian bluff. I doubt Germany will go back to Russian gas after they pulled this one. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-tension-puts-focus-gas-pipeline-parts-2022-09-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-...
- osipov 4y ago
- hi_herbert 4y ago

kken 4y ago

>Nord Stream 1 is broken due to sanctions on equipment repair It's well known that this is not true. You are perpetuating russian propaganda.

foverzar 4y ago
> It's well known that this is not true Well known? Is it? Could you please give some reference then? No one would be surprised to see a "work-to-rule" action, but how is it "russian propaganda" that Europe had sanctioned Russian energy industry and it "somehow" had consequences?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- KronisLV 4y ago
  I don't really care much for the debate, or fully buy into either perspective on the issue, but here's what a quick search turned up, from the 31st of August: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/nord-stream-1-europe-inflation/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/nord-stream-1-eu... > Russian state energy giant Gazprom cut all deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday in what it said was a planned shutdown until Saturday for maintenance work. > In recent months, Gazprom has slashed flows through Nord Stream 1 to just 20% of capacity, citing maintenance issues and blaming Western sanctions on exports of technology imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. > Russia has also cut off supplies to several “unfriendly” European countries and energy companies over their refusal to pay for gas in rubles, as the Kremlin insists, rather than the euros or dollars stated in contracts. European leaders say Russia is trying to blackmail countries over their support for Ukraine. > France’s Engie (EGIEY) is the latest casualty. On Tuesday, Gazprom said it would completely suspend deliveries to Engie (EGIEY) from Thursday, claiming that it had not received full payment from the company for the gas it supplied in July. Someone can probably look up Gazprom's own PR response and see how it matches up (or doesn't) with the statement by Engie, as well as what differs. Most of the time it's good to look up what various sources say, if you're interested in it, and come to your own conclusions. From my perspective, reliance on another country, the relations with which have historically been troubled (and are now further strained, given the geopolitical events), does not seem like the best of ideas - alternative means of securing the resources that are needed for providing electricity/heat are more than welcome.
  - foverzar 4y ago
    Well, these go more or less in line with my impression that European restrictions are the cause of most disruptions of normal operations, from maintenance to payment. Add to that the NS2 pipeline, that could have been started, but never was. And Yamal-Europe pipeline that was shutdown by due to sanctions. Diversification of supply is a good thing, sure, but how would it affect the competitiveness of European industry is a curious matter.
- marvin 4y ago
  Russian propaganda says that Nord Stream 1 is closed due to repairs. It obviously is not. It is closed because Russia wages economic warfare against Europe. You won't find a peer-reviewed double-blind study saying this, signed by foreign minister Lavrov with an interview in the appendix where he states that this is in fact Russia's deliberate policy choice, but one can use some basic reasoning. The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies.
  - hi_herbert 4y ago
  - foverzar 4y ago
    > Russian propaganda says that Nord Stream 1 is closed due to repairs. It obviously is not. It is closed because Russia wages economic warfare against Europe. You won't find a peer-reviewed double-blind study saying this, signed by foreign minister Lavrov with an interview in the appendix where he states that this is in fact Russia's deliberate policy choice, but one can use some basic reasoning. I don't need peer-reviewed double-blinded study. I need something that has at least a bit more substance than "well known", "obvious" or other argumentum ad populum > The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies. The ground truth is that the US and Europe (for however justified reason) had declared an economic war against Russia (sanctions), which has no means or strength to wage a real economic war of its own. And another ground truth is that they were not properly thought through as 2/4 pipelines are sanctioned and cannot be used, financial operations are sanctioned and cannot normally be performed, technology export and maintenance is sanctioned. All this to disrupt Russia's operations, while Europe STILL depends on it. Replace Russia with any random variable and you would still get the same effect if you don't mind where you shoot and nuke half your own energy market. It doesn't even have any real means to "punish poor Europeans with all it's economic might", otherwise there wouldn't be ANY gas flowing to Europe for months now. Instead Russia simply does absolutely nothing to mitigate Europe's own risks of continuing running operations restricted and sanctioned all around by itself, while still profiting from it. Please stop defending incompetence and labeling every uncomfortable piece of reality as "Russian propaganda".
origin_path 4y ago
The broken turbines in question were sent to western factories which repaired them. If they weren't broken it would have been noticed. And recall, the whole point of sanctions was to degrade Russia's industrial capacity by preventing them from repairing things that depended on western parts, so this is very likely a priori. Anyway it doesn't matter. NS2 is there ready and waiting to go, but Germany won't switch it on ... due to sanctions.
- welterde 4y ago
  Only one turbine and that one is sitting for several months in Germany, waiting for Gazprom to actually request delivery of it. Nevermind that Siemens Energy states that there is nothing wrong with the existing ones and that there is actually a spare turbine sitting in storage on site of the compressor station that could be installed. Everything needed for Russia to continue supplying gas was explicitly exempt from the sanctions. There are another two gas pipelines that are available to Russia (bypassing Poland), which they have also used a bit during the first NS1 shutdown, but they reduced/stopped deliveries via them too - NS2 wouldn't change anything about that either. At this point it's obvious what Russia is trying to do. They went all-in with stopping of the gas deliveries to try to get the West to stop supporting Ukraine. But it looks like they might have played that card too late.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    There were 5 turbines needing to be repaired by Siemens, not one: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanction-exemption-five-remaining-turbines-1.6560744 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanction-exemption-f... And nobody, not the Canadian government, not the British government nor Siemens is disputing that the equipment needed maintenance. Now that's changed and Siemens is claiming it's safe to run a high pressure gas pipeline when the machinery is broken and leaking. That is absurd - if there's one place safety is critical it's right next to a pipeline full of explosive gas. We can safely assume Siemens is under tremendous pressure to support this Ruskies-doing-it-to-us narrative as a consequence. Yes, all the pipelines were closed due to sanctions. Russia was still pumping gas at full speed through one of the pipelines that passed through Ukraine as recently as August: https://www.ft.com/content/8ed4ccdb-522a-4003-8010-1a786af18bbc https://www.ft.com/content/8ed4ccdb-522a-4003-8010-1a786af18... It got shut down because Ukraine could not receive transit fees from Russia due to EU banking sanctions. EU was "looking into it". Their sanctions turn out to block things they didn't intend all the time. If our governments really thought Russia was lying about the equipment they could just authorize NS2 and then say - see? - when no gas flows. They aren't doing that. Instead they blocked all the other pipelines via sanctions and then let the last one break, again due to sanctions. Then having successfully blocked Russian gas they blamed Russia for it, knowing full well after COVID that people will happily swallow almost anything no matter how contradictory it is.

micwag 4y ago

> We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways First point is true, but the second ist not. Germany went out its way to ensure all contracts are fulfilled to avoid this claim. > it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe. Russia very much wants to go back to selling gas and oil to europe, they have after all no other relevant industries and pipelines to China/India don't have the capacity to replace european delivery. > Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately. Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict and to be relegated to a possible chinese puppet state in the future.

mistrial9 4y ago
> Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?
- micwag 4y ago
  To quote the state owned russian news agency: > "Repeated case of interference of the Bank of Russia into implementation of the budget rule in terms of foreign currency purchases means that the floating currency rate regime existed from the end of 2014 until early 2018 is ‘only on paper now’ and is actually substituted by regulation of the currency market by the Bank for Russia for the purpose of eliminating threats for financial stability, jeopardized by the budget rule effect," https://tass.com/economy/1026029 https://tass.com/economy/1026029 This was 4 years ago, and is even more so true now. The ruble at the moment is NOT free floating.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  A higher FX is usually neither here nor there and whether it's desirable depends on the makeup of exports vs imports. That's why countries often have a fixed peg instead of a "just make it go up" policy. Russia is the definite loser out of this, and indeed everyone is, the decision to invade was a catastrophe for everyone on multiple levels.
- 4y ago

phicoh 4y ago

The key thing to remember is that Russia reduced the gas supply to Europe already one year ago. Way before they invaded Ukraine, and therefor before any of the recent sanctions. It is assumed that Russia sent a warning message to EU countries not to interfere. Fortunately, most EU countries recognized that Russia was no longer a reliable supplier. And imposed sanctions, delivered weapons anyhow. Russia thought they could threaten their most important customers. The problem Russia now has, it that there is hardly any capacity to sell gas to other countries. Building pipelines will take many years and will have to happen without western technology (I'm sure Russia would like China to own their pipelines). Or Russia has to build more LNG terminals, but that is also not ideal. And ship from western countries probably won't go there. Of course, the downside of relying to much on Russian gas is that EU countries now have to deal with an enormous energy shortage.

cloutchaser 4y ago
I think you are reading way too many one sided sources. The Russians are selling more to China and India since the war. The higher price of gas means in the short run they are making more money. Yes, some sanctions might be annoying, in the way a mosquito is annoying to you, but basically nothing europe has done has really had an impact. (Most weapons have come from the US). So while parts of what you say is true, frankly the situation is terrible for Europe, quite bad for Russia, and pretty awesome for the US
- phicoh 4y ago
  Yes, Russia is selling a little bit more to China and India. Not nearly enough to make up for the reduction in sales to EU countries. In addition, China and India get nice discounts. Yes, Russia makes a lot more money at the moment because the small amount of gas they still sell to EU countries is expensive enough that it nets more money. Anybody who has been following the war a bit will notice that Russia is now seriously running out of modern weapons. By the time tanks from the early 60s show up at the front line, you can be sure something is wrong. At the moment, and due sanctions, Russia has a bit of a production problem. Since the 2014 sanctions, Russia has a bit a problem with obtaining micro-electronics. The effects of that are also quite noticeable. In any case. Over the summer, EU countries managed to fill their gas storage while producing enough electricity to keep most stuff running. So yes, the situation is bad for the economy and EU countries have to figure how to help people pay their energy bill, etc. But if the current situation is 'terrible' then I wonder what word has to be used for a real disaster.

distances 4y ago

You have quite the nerve to spread these falsehoods here, and then claim it's Europe that is the unreliable partner. Amazing and supremely twisted. I have no interest in discussing this with you as you're not here with good intentions, but I would let others know that Western countries were very accommodating with the spare parts, which in practice called the Russian bluff. I doubt Germany will go back to Russian gas after they pulled this one. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-tension-puts-focus-gas-pipeline-parts-2022-09-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-...

osipov 4y ago
hi_herbert 4y ago