Here is the price of natural gas in the US and Europe:
Until February, the US and European prices of natural gas were generally within a few dollars of each other. Today, the US price is $9 and the average price in Europe is about $70.
Much of this is because Europe is trying to replace Russian gas with liquefied natural gas from other countries. However, Europe doesn't have enough capacity at its LNG ports to come even close to making up the loss from Russia. This supply constraint has produced bidding wars with Japan and South Korea that have caused natural gas prices to skyrocket around the world. In the US, by contrast, we have plenty of domestic supply and prices are low and fairly stable.
This is why Europe is way more panicked about energy prices this winter than we are.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I gotta admit...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accused-germany-becoming-totally-dependent-russian-energy-un-germans-just-smirked/
I suppose he was right in thinking that the Saudi’s would be interested in Israel’s nuclear capabilities too.
With the revelation that our allies nuclear capabilities documents were available for all guests to see at Mar a Lago I just wonder if "the deed" is already done.
Jared got $2B from the Saudis. Payment in full for the Top Secret Inel??????
It seems to me that every time the republicans rush to Trumps defense there's a leak that shows just how stupid Trump is.
I didn’t have “selling Israel’s nuclear secrets” in the “how low can he go” sweepstakes but as soon as I saw the WP story the reason for the $2 billion Saudi “investment” in Kushner’s company became clear. To be honest, I thought the money had something to do with Khashoggi.
His stupidity is absolutely bottomless, and conservatives will rationalize anything because it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate how extremist their experience is.
Is there a line they won't cross? For the real bad guys there is no line, and they always want you to know it.
Indeed. From who else could the Saudis learn how to build a nuclear program from scratch?
Rogue Afrikaaner generals still pissed they had to give up the bomb?
Blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while
But I gotta admit Trump seems Nostradamus-like in retrospect. Krauts did/will get fucked by this whole debacle
Some advisor got the speechwriter to put that in for the blind squirrel to read, and that’s the nut of it …
There were people concerned about that well before that quip.
When traveling around, I noticed nearly every commercial building in the Frankfurt area had solar panels on their roof-tops, whereas Phoenix and LA had, at the time (ten/fifteen years ago) charitably, a few.
U.S. independence in oil and gas has nothing to do with Trump (or any politician), it is a result of the development of fracking. Fracking will not last forever - it seems to be less profitable that projected.
Fracking is one of those government boondoggles. Bloomberg had an analysis showing that, overall, investors have not made any money from fracking. This isn't to say that one can't money from fracking but that there are better ways to invest your money than taking an option on a fracking gas field. On the plus side, this is one of those government boondoggles that has paid off even if it just gets us through the current squeeze.
P.S. Offshore drilling, another government boondoggle, had a much better payback for investors.
"Fracking is one of those government boondoggles. Bloomberg had an analysis showing that, overall, investors have not made any money from fracking." You;re confusing a private sector boondoggle with a government boondoggle. And the private sector has gotten smarter by rfusing to give fracking companies any additional money this go round. (Which is the actual reason US production did not rise when oil went to $120 a barrel. They correctly guessed that it would soon fall substantially.
But the US politicians who paid for the basic research and then paid for the cost of commercializing that research should get the credit for fracking.
On the flip side, Europeans are rushing to install insulation and change out their heating systems while Germany goes on an LNG terminal spending spree (https://bityl.co/EF8H and https://bityl.co/EF8N).
The high prices will have more spillover into the US as the price differential drives contracts to LNG shipments, but it's all still relatively cheap. Gonna be a lot more fracking over the next decade, erasing all gains from slashing GHGs.
See my comment below. Spiking the Nord Stream 2 project was a long term goal of US energy lobbyists because it would bring Europe begging to US gas producers and LNG facilities. It took the Ukraine war to do it, but it looks like they got their wish. As you surmise, this will keep gas wells throughout TX, OK, and ND humming for a good long time.
" Spiking the Nord Stream 2 project was a long term goal of US energy lobbyists because it would bring Europe begging to US gas producers and LNG facilities." Except it's actually sending them to Qatar and Australia. (And Russia of course.)
The Germans could dust off all their shuttered nuclear power plants until they get a more long term solution to their Russian-caused energy crisis.
Seriously. We can debate whether it makes sense to build new nuclear plants, but keeping old ones running should be a no-brainer.
The problem is that Germany uses very little of its natural gas for producing electricity. And dusting off all of the nuclear power and coal plants isn't going to help with where they actually use the gas (with the exception of all of the space heaters the germanys are going to be using this winter.) Nuclear power isn;t going to produce feed stock for their chemical industry. Isn't going to do much to make their gas stoves and gas water heaters work.
Was decommissioning nuclear power the tradeoff the Green Party got in 1999 to remain in the coalition government with SPD during/after German participation in NATO warcrimes against Serbian pacifists?
More precisely, North Western EU does not have enough LNG terminal capacity, while the Iberians (Port, Sp.) have a modest excess of capacity.
The major wrinkle being that Iberia is an energy island relative to gas infrastructure, as the proposed gas interconnexion was blocked by certain parties - rather short-sighted.
One can put in Floating terminals (FSRU) relatively quickly but everyone is bidding on those too so quite the near-term squeeze.
The Germans massively fucked up and their superior-sneering on energy has been a rather hard pill for many to swallow, so there is quite a lot of schadenfreude behind closed doors. Their decommissioning of Nuclear due to the idiot Grunen's agenda and Merkel's foolish call...
"he Germans massively fucked up " You have to be a complete imbecile to think there was ever any possibility of LNG, at ten times the cost, was ever going to be able to compete with piped natural gas regardless of its source.
This is going to lead to a overbuilding of natural gas. When the war ends(which is quicker than people think) the surge and overproduction will be huge.
The Europeans believed in globalization even more than Americans. They couldn’t imagine Russia would be so aggressive even after 2014. We’ve all sold our futures to these corrupt societies for cheap junk and cheap energy. This result, I guess, will be some well deserved economic pain.
We knew all we needed to know about the Russians a long time ago. But we made excuses and chose to ignore it.
“Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed.”
In 2022 it’s more of the same and worse. I don’t know how it ends. I suspect badly, but who knows? Maybe people will come to their senses eventually… no doubt only after much suffering.
Yep, the hammer should have been brought down on Russia in 2014 after its illegal annexation of Crimea and downing of the Malaysian airliner. That's when it should have been clear that Putin had no intention of submitting to international norms or preserving peace in Europe. But Russia also had a hugely successful political lobbying/corruption operation running throughout the EU that kept the politicians nicely bribed and in line and governing elites were loathe to turn of the spigot of oligarch money flooding places like London and Vienna. Russia didn't need to negotiate appeasement politically -- it just bought it.
Well, they "helped" put donnie in office, per the Mullen investigation.
Oh yes. Russia's interference in the 2016 election was basically just an extension of the scheme they had been running in Europe for years. Most of the right-wing parties in Europe like Le Pen's Front National, the AfD and UKIP were all captured by Russian influence/funding operations. Not a few socialist politicians continued to support Russia just for old times sake, so they were already in the bag.
Oh, no, True Progressives like Melanchon in France were also getting kickbacks from Russia.
The Socialists in Europe didn't sell their souls to Uralian genocidaires for nothing.
Socialists may want to wallow in thr world's immiseration, but they are highend escorts personally, not crackwhores.
"illegal annexation of crimea" There was a free and fair election in the crimea and more than 90% of the population voted to leave the Ukraine. In fact, there had never been a majority of the Crimean population that had agreed to be in the Ukraine. Having the rest of the ukraine unilaterally rewrite the constitution cancelling crimean autonomy and then remove Crimea's candidate in an illegal coup d'etat completely alienated the crimean populace.
Robert Mugabe & Saddam Hussein liked this.
Bashar al-Assad retweeted this.
Iran air flight 655 was flying its regularly scheduled route when it was shot down by the US navy with 290 on board killed.
Indeed. And the USA invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. It’s worthy of condemnation and so I condemn it.
Governments all over this awful world are awful. People living in my own city are criminals. Thieves, murderers, and child abusers. Religious fanatics use their ideology to oppress and harass people they don’t like.
It’s a tough world out there. Humanity isn’t really worth saving.
Now do Korean Air 007....
Good thing Germany closed all of its nuclear plants :/.
They had never closed all of it's nuclear plants.
Is it too soon to ask if Greta Thunberg is a Russian asset?
Congratulations!
You will be awarded the prize for most stupid comment of the month!
As far as I remember didn’t Ms Thunberg lobby for using Russian gas . The idea of being dependent on the mob in The Kremlin was coming from the German conservatives under leadership of Angela Merkel
Nah, brah... She's not even a questionable ally like Olivia Julianna, let alone a cradle to grave GQPer like Qameron Qasky or David Hoqq.
Thunders is good.
Schroeder and Merkel both deserve to be dragged for a good long time for their decision to hitch Germany's -- and Europe's -- energy cart to Russia. The thinking at the time was that using Russian energy would 1. provide a cheap replacement for coal and nuclear energy, which the public strongly opposed and 2. help integrate Russia into the European economy, providing an incentive for good behavior. Well, that didn't work out too well. If the European public makes it through this winter, I wouldn't be surprised to see a grassroots movement to bring back nuclear power.
Also, Republican opposition to Nord Stream 2 was, as you might expect, in complete bad faith. It wasn't about trying to constrain Russia, but rather directing European energy policy towards the US, particularly major gas producing states like TX and LA who are looking to build out their LNG infrastructure. This was a policy position crafted by energy industry lobbyists in Houston, not conservative think tanks in DC concerned about Russian influence in European energy markets.
"The thinking at the time was that using Russian energy would" Contrary to you complete ignorance and overwhelming stupidity the thanking was that russian natural gas was vastly cheaper than any alternative. The cost to temporarily forgo Russian natural gas now during the Ukraine war is still vastly cheaper to the alternative you are backing.
The lesson free societies seem to need to relearn is that autocrats should not be trusted to supply the critical needs of their population. Eventually they will try to use that power as leverage.
The sooner we can shake off our addiction to fossil fuels the better--As much as supporting drug cartels, the continued fossil fuel addiction supports murderous autocrats around the world.
It's not just autocrats. What are the US led prohibitions on sale of critical goods, such as computer chips, to Russia but the use of that power as leverage?
Note that I state no judgment on righteousness. Isaac Asimov noted decades ago that nobody is a villain in their own mind; I'm sure that Putin sees himself as righteous, just as much as Biden sees himself the same.
The bright side is that Europe has finally gotten enough capacity and storage filled that they can survive the winter. It'll be a long cold winter, but they don't have to go crawling back to Russia to survive it.
This also kinda screw Russia a bit because energy dependence coercion was a huge string to his bow. I'm pretty sure Putin isn't enjoying being defanged by Europe's willingness to pay such higher prices just to oppose him.
I'm not sure I understand this. If Europe doesn't have enough LNG capacity at its ports, why is it bidding up the price of LNG against Japan and South Korea? Is it buying LNG that it cannot import or are there two separate problems here?
Bingo. Kevin is having one of his rare moments of making absolutely no sense. The reality is that LNG is just plain expensive and frankly does not produce less green house gases than coal. The number of times I see people compare co2 from coal vs co2 from piped natural gas and claim it is LNG is astounding. It completely ignores that in most places you need to burn 4 units of natural gas to liquify 5 units of natural gas
It does produce far less greenhouse emissions than non carbon captured coal. Are you that retarded????? What do you think has caused the decline in carbon emissions in the US since 2005. What a idiot you are.
Every statement in this comment is wrong. The energy expended in liquefaction is much less and partially recoverable upon gasification - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124045859000052
Gas combustion emits less CO2 than coal because much of the energy is released from the oxidation of the hydrogen atoms.
Liquefaction facilities are far more complex and expensive that gasification facilities. Gasification simply requires running the LNG through a heat exchanger; for efficiency, you can run the resulting high pressure gas through a turbine and generate electricity before the gas goes into a pipeline.
Liquefaction, on the other hand, requires compressors and refrigerating units and a lot of power. Ideally, the compressors and refrigerating units are powered by renewable energy, but as often as not a portion of the natural gas arriving at the liquefaction facility is burned to power the machinery. The upshot is that it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to build a LNG liquefaction facility, whereas gasification facilities can be built relatively quickly and cheaply, as long as the pipeline to connect them to is already in place.
Out of thin air: new solar-powered invention creates hydrogen fuel from the atmosphere,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/07/out-of-thin-air-new-solar-powered-invention-creates-hydrogen-fuel-from-the-atmosphere
Perhaps Europe was unwise to ban fracking? And close all those nuclear plants? Perhaps they should have had secure alternatives available first?
Won't matter. There is nothing to frack there. Do you need a nostril detachment???
Europe has never banned fracking. Pull your head out of your arse. No one has figured out how to do fracking profitably in europe, despite many eastern european countries giving it their all.
Europe was thoroughly explored for oil and gas long ago. Romania was the only place west of the USSR where oil was found on land in any quantity, and their fields are pretty much exhausted. The North Sea fields are largely depleted, although Norway continues to produce a fair bit of gas from offshore. In short, there is nothing to frack.
Colonized peoples pay more for energy.
"This supply constraint has produced bidding wars with Japan and South Korea " I would love to hear the explanation of how the fact that europe can't import more LNG leads to a price war with Korea and Japan.