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Even a lot of Dutch people don't know this but for decades the Netherlands was selling huge quantities of natural gas for bargain prices to anyone willing to pa
by Yeul 2y ago
Even a lot of Dutch people don't know this but for decades the Netherlands was selling huge quantities of natural gas for bargain prices to anyone willing to pay.
Why? Because some very smart Dutch experts calculated that Europe would switch to nuclear so there was a limited window of opportunity to sell this soon to be useless commodity.
And to add insult to injury just as the Ukraine crisis started all the gas fields were starting to run dry.
- sebastiennight 2y agoTo give those experts some credit, they probably had overly optimistic assumptions that European countries would take the rational smart choice of nuclear, instead of being all over the place.
- illiac786 2y agoI’d agree, being wrong doesn’t mean the reasoning was wrong. They bet on the most likely and I would think it was at the time the most likely. Something less likely happened instead. Doesn’t make them stupid at all, it just illustrates that predicting the future is hard if not impossible.
- dehrmann 2y agoI think part of Russia and Iran making moves right now is that, like the Dutch, they're seeing the window of opportunity for selling fossil fuel closing, and they're settling long-term grievances while the rest of the world still needs their resources and can't isolate them like North Korea.