European countries dealing with recent transportation issues in the Middle East have not experienced an increase in gas prices, which may indicate their success in weaning themselves off Russian gas.
Although the dangers of shipping through the Red Sea have forced carriers to take a longer route, the price of Qatari gas for Europeans has not increased, and electricity costs have remained stable since the crisis. Basic European electricity prices are now trading at less than €30 per megawatt-hour, or roughly one-tenth of their peak levels in 2022. It is thought to be a strong indication that the worst nightmare, which sent energy bills skyrocketing and inflation to multi-year highs in 2022, is over.
Europe took a responsible approach to preparation and accumulated record volumes of gas. Furthermore, Europeans actively used renewable energy sources, allowing them to diversify their consumption while quietly passing through the crisis. Factors such as a mild winter and a slowdown in economic growth all had an impact, reducing gas consumption needs in industrial giants like Germany. However, the issue of a new approach to energy policy, utilising liquefied gas and alternative sources, is more unpredictable. Today, Europeans will be more affected by external factors, such as geopolitical realities, which will impact energy supplies.
EU member states that still consume gas from the Russian Federation should begin preparations for the suspension of the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine, which will take place at the end of 2024, after the contract expires.
Vincent Clerc, chief executive of the shipping giant AP Møller-Maersk, has warned that it could take months to restore the important trade route through the Red Sea, threatening an economic and inflationary blow to the global economy, companies and consumers.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/europe-seems-adapted-life-without-081318231.html
Comment: The word “adapted” is doing a lot of heavy listing in this article. Sure Europeans are not freezing to death or eating their pets as Putin predicted, but European industry is going through some real changes, especially in Germany. It will never go back to the way it was.
Even Ukraine has adapted to the Russian efforts to freeze them into submission. They manage to get the lights back on and the heat running pretty quickly after a massive missile and drone attack, faster than we do here in the mid-Atlantic after a moderate snowstorm. And the Ukrainians certainly aren’t eating their pets. Even in the trenches, Ukrainian soldiers are kind and protective to stray pets and wild animals.
Russians, on the other hand, are freezing this winter. It’s certainly not from a lack of gas, but it is from a lack of maintenance and a lack of workers needed to do that maintenance. Too many of them are being fed into Putin’s meat grinder.
TTG
Coke and Pepsi are still on sale at $1 per can. Bill Gates still has a fortune of well over $100 billion dollars, and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have even more. ABC Newscaster Andrea Mitchell is still married to former head of the federal reserve bank Alan Greenspan, so you can rest assured that your news reporting has been fair and unbiased.
TTG – your reporting is biased. The entire RF was outraged this past week at the sad death of little Cat Twix who was evicted from her compartment on a train by an insensitive employee who left her out to die of exposure. Laws were passed immediately to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies. But do you even mention it? No. I’m beginning to wonder about you. You are in danger of being considered an odd egg. I have been called an odd duck myself, but never an odd egg. In my opinion there are already some odd eggs who post here, so at least you will have company.
US Navy Seals Confirmed Dead.
https://youtu.be/Om4o_jF0RYE
New details revealed about attack on U.S. military base in Iraq.
https://youtu.be/H-9iRK0HPWg
Several hurt on US Military Base in Iraq.
https://youtu.be/QikFr–_3_8
Kaliningrad has a gas problem but the Baltic fleet is in attendance according to my calculations the ice has melted sooner due to warming in the global.
Even the russians are freezing at hq
F&L,
Did you notice that the cat ‘Twix’ is named after a Mars Wrigley chocolate bar?
F&L
I thought words mattered to you, but this “US Navy Seals Confirmed Dead.” The title of this article bothers me. The Seals may or may not be dead. But, their deaths have not been “confirmed” they have been “declared.” I still hold out they’ve maybe made it, maybe not, but the obfuscation in this headline is still problematic.
Team Odd Egg
cobo and F&L,
My first full time paying job was on the Roaring Brook Poultry Farm working for Mr. Schweitzer. I know something about odd eggs. Seen all kinds of weird shapes.
Life is much better Without gas problems .. but I’m addicted to Chili ..and eat way to many “crackers “! Remember when colonel land moved his platform to Holland And the Bear Brothers crashed his site when they shut down the Dutch refinery’s
Thanks for the link to the Seals FnL ..our son in law was UDT Sub driver .. killed
While Diving Miss him a lot
TTG .. sites doing well You have a BBQ in that Gazebo ??
Jim
” […] it is from a lack of maintenance and a lack of workers needed to do that maintenance. Too many of them are being fed into Putin’s meat grinder.”
TTG, it seems to me that this is an arithmetical impossibility.
Let’s look at the figures, however imprecise they may be.
Let’s assume that Ukraine has mobilised 700,000 troops.
Let’s assume that the total resource is 35 million. (R=2%)
For Russia, and under the same conditions of imprecision, the figures are 1,200,000 and 145 million. (R=0,83%)
There’s no contest. The war is extracting far more human resources from Ukraine than it is from Russia.
If anyone should be worried about the lack of hands for maintenance, it’s Ukraine. On the other hand, everyone knows that Russian yields are quite low (/s). But, even sans /s, I don’t think this makes up for the Ukrainian drain.
There are a few things I’d like to say about the article quoted, but I’m not comfortable enough to elaborate.
d74,
“If anyone should be worried about the lack of hands for maintenance, it’s Ukraine.”
One would think that, but it’s not what’s happening. Ukraine is keeping her energy and transportation infrastructure running in the face of fairly frequent Russian attacks. Russian energy infrastructure is failing this winter even without a lot of Ukrainian strikes or sabotage.
Jeremy Morris, on his Postsocialism blog knows a little about it and wrote about the larger context a couple of days ago.
Some matters like privatization of the infrastructure reminds me of the larger privatization Zeitgeist over here. In times of money shortage some cities were lured into cross-border-leasing contracts with 99 years of duration. US contracts with US jurisdiction. Doubtful if the people in charge in the cities understood at all what they signed. Given some of these contracts were beyond 1.500 pages long. Occasionally handled rather secretly too.
But in Russia that seems to be only part of the problem:
https://postsocialism.org/2024/01/14/no-ukraine-did-not-turn-your-radiator-in-rostov-off-or-on-the-inability-to-think-sociologically/
To summarise, the seemingly too-coincidental-to-be-accident-failures of the heating network should be viewed in the context of the multiple social factors at play – far more likely than sabotage (in this particular case). First there is the privatization of a critical and vulnerable network. Heating plants feed communal hot-water pipes just below the surface which then have a single ingress to housing blocks – in a severe frost which penetrates the ground up to two metres, these can fail and effectively shut down the whole grid. Privatization, as has been demonstrated again and again, while not the proximal cause, leads to the sweating of former public assets and inadequate investment in long-term upgrades and even basic repair (in the UK where against the advice of most, water was wholly privatized a similar cascade of failures is occurring right now). Where assets at municipal owned, the starving of local authority financing has the same effect.
“Ukrainska Pravda” just as bad as Russian Pravda, but in this one’s defense they are quoting Bloomberg, who couldn’t be bothered with accurate figures. Here’s the chart:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267500/eu-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price-country/
Electricity is down from “peak” but still 100% higher than before the war.
“Furthermore, Europeans actively used renewable energy sources, allowing them to diversify their consumption while quietly passing through the crisis.”
Did these people even read Bloomberg’s reports on the failure of renewables in Europe to provide base load at prewar levels?
“It will never go back to the way it was.”
Germany volunteered to de-industrialize to save Ukraine? That’s not even worth an LOL. Has anyone at Bloomberg looked at German elections lately?
“Vincent Clerc, chief executive of the shipping giant AP Møller-Maersk, has warned that it could take months to restore the important trade route through the Red Sea…”
America to war, now! To save Europe just like the neocons and Euros wanted when they provoked this disaster.
Fred – there were temporary spikes caused by panic buying, as here:-
“Meanwhile, EU countries are rushing to fill their gas storage facilities ahead of the winter.
“The shopping spree has increased demand and inevitably pushed prices further up, as market actors realise governments are willing to foot the expensive bill to salvage the cold season.”
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
But the long term trend is caused by several factors:-
– greater post-Covid Asian demand,
– the earlier EU/UK insistence on spot. Great when there’s a surplus but not so good when the market’s tight. That’s changing now, or supposed to be.
– greater use of LNG as opposed to piped.
– allied to that last, shortage of and uncertainty about Russian supplies.
To a minor extent the UK’s a bit of a special case. We still produce a good deal of our own energy and at much the same cost as before – natural gas, oil, nuclear, renewables – but the bidding system means the price of home-produced has shot up in tandem with the global price.
On top of all that the drive to Net Zero, my view, very badly thought out, has turned the market upside down anyway. The sabotage of North Stream hasn’t helped either.
With all the extraneous factors in play anyway, Europe cut it’s own throat by engaging in the sanctions war. We’d hoped to cut Russia’s but failed, so we’re in a pickle. I blame Barbarossa Scholz, as the most powerful European statesman by far, but in truth we were all in on it.
We wait to see whether Russia will come to our aid after the war. They may not feel like it, given the circumstances. Our politicians are industriously getting us in the right frame of mind for the new Cold War, as are yours, so it’s in the balance whether they’ll feel like it or not.
In the meantime LNG costs more than piped so the economic engine of Europe – the German industrial colossus – isn’t pulling the rest of us along as vigorously as it used to.
Trying to take you seriously here: Russians are freezing because maintenance is suffering because “too many” maintenance workers are being fed into Putin’s “meat grinder”?
drifter,
Either that or they have really shitty infrastructure and they’re just shitty at maintaining it.
There’s a theory of sublimation of political protest, not due to Freud as far as I know but it’s a theory. According to this theory the severe uproar recently all throughout Russia over the unfortunate death of poor little Twix the domestic cat, was actually a sublimation of the desire to protest the (war) special military operation – which is unadvisable due to harsh penalties. Possibly the protests over the heating problems is another example, but I don’t know. I do know that I read about people in two locations who had to stand outdoors in the cold of winter to stay warm by building fires. And I read a joke on a Siberian Telegram channel about how the heating problems are due to the pipes to missiles program.
F&L…..
Have Seen The Movie Curretly Playing…Starring Anthony Hopkins…””Freud*s Last Session..” …Set on the Eve of WW2…When He Debates C.S. Lewis..(Matthew Goode)
Over The Future of Mankind..and The Existence of God..?
Its getting Very Good Reviews..Want to Go.my Treat..
jim
Jim,
I haven’t had the chance to watch that yet but will put it on my list, thanks. I’ve been greatly enjoying the lectures of Professor Paul Freedman on the Early Middle Ages. I’m at minute 9 and 10 of episode 19 now (I skip around, don’t watch sequentially) and the parallels with our world today are fascinating. The Merovingians, who wore their hair very long, had lost effective power to the Carolingians who wore their hair cropped short with moustaches – they became hereditary “Maiors” of the Palace and owned castles, estates and operated militaries but without the complex bureaucracy of Western Rome or Eastern Byzantium or the later empires such as the Ottoman. I’m seeing analogies with today – Presidents losing powers to deep states? I don’t know but it’s very interesting, and the man is a marvelous lecturer.
Below the link to Prof Freedman is one to a book by Dr Herbert Stein M.D. who not only is a real practicing Freudian psychiatrist and an author but who was one of the innovators in care of veterans suffering from combat injuries such as PTSD, developing a ground-breaking program at one of the large Veterans Hospitals of the NY City metropolitan area in either Brooklyn or the Bronx. His book is a delightful introduction to Freudian psychology by way of exegesis of a number of well known movie hits.
The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000 – Charlemagne | Prof Paul Freedman.
https://youtu.be/diwsP8eOpvE
Double Feature by Dr Herbert Stein
https://a.co/d/hGq3lut
jim..
The potential for a movie based on such a discussion is tremendous. Sadly from the reviews I’ve seen that potential seems not to have been realized. C. S. Lewis is mentioned by several reviewers as being “the author of Narnia”. This kind of misses the point that C. S. Lewis wrote a very short* but inestimably important treatise on Progress itself; The Abolition of Man.
A movie dedicated to an investigation of this topic would have to be set in our present age, for we are presently at the very point of realizing the existential threat to ourselves that Lewis so brilliantly describes. The Abolition of Man in fact represents the philosophical and logical underpinnings which (according to Lewis, with whom I agree) will lead us to a dystopian future of the kind described by Huxley**. It would be refreshing to see a movie dedicated to such topical and important subject matter.
*For anyone who has not read the book, it is available here. The third and final part, which can be read on its own, is just 18 pages.
**Brave New World’s benevolent World Controllers would instead be psychopaths according to Lewis. A Freudian rebuttal of this forecast would be entertaining.
That should read “..underpinnings of true nature of ‘progress’ which..”
replying to FnL…Barbera Ann….
Thanks For Comments…I Think The Movie Would
be Extremely interesting To Watch…For Content
Alone…Anthony Hopkins Seems Perfect for the
Freud Role..And C>S> Lewis would be The Person
To Carry on the Debate…With Depth…
I Like That Barbera Ann Suggests The Here and Now
For this Debate..I Thing 1939..With Its Dynamics..Was a Perfect time for This Movies Setting..
I Think Barbera Ann And FnL…Could and HAVE put Well Read Analysis of the Future of Mankind…AI…Orson Wells…and God ..vs Anti God..scematics…To the Blue Print..of 2024..In its Final Form…Matter vs Anti Matter…Fusion..Combustion
..A Thinking Human Being…Called Man and Woman..With Gods Emotions..Tampered With..
Creating Psychiatry…To Understand The How..
and Why..And Debate…The Record..That Transcends…Diagnosis..So they Question ..God.?? Why has everything Come TRUE..
jim
.
Given that Europe used to heavily tax all fossil fuels, it is interesting that there is little public discussion on any changes to the excise tax regime during this “inflation” period, in public media.
If the European governments have had to slash taxes to maintain price levels, then they are facing a double-whammy of lower tax revenue and inflation pressures. Government spending is likely in trouble. No wonder that Germany, et al, will not meet their NATO 2% standard for a very long time.
Given that consideration, and the general public discontent (see Germany, Netherlands, and France), how long can they keep supplying Ukraine.
And then the interesting question to watch is, Will Russia (and China) maintain the same spending/supply, in the face of decreasing Ukrainian supplies?
Yes, Ukraine wants to ramp up its own military industrial capacity. But that is at the same time as everyone else buying up tooling. Will China sell Ukraine artillery production lines?
Kagarlitsky was recently released from jail in Russia. His offence? Hard to determine but he did do a video blog at the time of one of the successful attacks on strategic bombers in the interior of the RF and he had a reputation as a dissident under the Soviets in the 80s when he was arrested in 1982 and released the next year. I don’t consider him particularly important but I’m pleased to see him mention the little cat Twix. I’m personally very dismissive of most of the political opposition to Putin, not because of anything other than the fact that it’s beside the point as the elections are laughable. It shouldn’t be that way maybe but it is. You’d think maybe Kagarlitsky could at least bring himself to make an amusing observation on the fact that Nadezhda (Надежда) in Russian means ‘hope,’ and that this candidate Nadezhdin’s name is almost identical with a common Russian “in” suffix (as with many of their 20th & 21st century leaders Lenin, Stalin, Yeltsin, Putin) appended directly onto their word for hope. But no, either he doesn’t make the connection (hard to believe) or he doesn’t want to burden his serious tone with anything which might appear fluffy and wry. Was the tale of Twix already too much levity (?) – maybe. I personally can easily see Putin (who has a devlish sense of humor) himself saying to an aide, grinning, “yes, haha, that’s a good one, hahaha, lets allow Nadezhdin to run for President.. hahaha, get it? Nadezhda Nadezhdin?” Yes Vladimir Vladimirovich, it is very amusing, you are a funny funny fellow, who would have thought of such a thing, “Boris Hope” for president in 2024! Doesn’t it remind you of President Barack “Hope and Change” Obama?
Anyway I offer this link because he mentioned little Twix and buttressed my defense of Russian’s concern for dear little pets. His take on the singer Shaman’s recent release strikes me as a real stretch bordering on the bizarre. How do we know what that video is meant to evoke – certainly not Navalny in my opinion, why not one of numerous POWs but I wouldn’t really venture to guess – best guess is it’s an appeal to the singer’s adolescent audience – teens are always feeling oppressed and confined unjustly by their few remaining years until adulthood and freedom from direct family control. So if I was handing out grades I’d give this a just barely passing C minus, but it’s possible I don’t know what I’m talking about – he ought to, he’s Russian and highly literate and social and goes way back. Maybe career success has gone so extremely to Shaman’s head that far that he now right under the nose of Putin works secretly for the CIA and supports Navalny? I certainly doubt that very much indeed. My conclusion is that the so-called opposition in Russia is of a very low quality indeed and that’s in large part because Putin simply isn’t the ogre he’s made out to be in the west and the Russians understand that. They understand that for the most part he’s just a great big little dick with a Russian accent instead of a NY City Queens, Pennsylvanian, Southern US, Texan or British accent. All those leaders with vanishingly rare exception are great big little dicks – it’s a job requirement in fact.
The Nadezhdin Phenomenon. Boris Kagarlitsky.
http://tinyurl.com/3epddpeu
In mid-January, two characters sharply pushed aside President Putin as the most-searched personages on the Russian-language internet. The first of these was the cat Twix, who tragically died on a railway voyage somewhere between St. Petersburg and Kirov. The conductor in the carriage, seeing the feline running out of his carrier, mistook the poor fellow for a hobo and threw him off the car, into the minus-thirty-degree frost outside. Several thousand people searched for the cat later, but were unable to save the poor creature. When he was found dead, hundreds of thousands angrily demanded punishment for the perpetrator of the crime. Government authorities urgently adopted new rules prohibiting railroad employees from throwing cats and dogs off trains (now known as the Twix the Cat Law). Some politicians are already calling for a monument to Twix.
But since January 19, presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin has drawn more public attention than not only Putin but even the cat.
The state of Texas has a right to resist invasion of their border, All border states have that right. Because there were no ‘opinions’ accompanying this SCOTUS Order vacating a Court of Appeals ruling, one can only speculate that it is about ‘preemption’ that Federal laws ‘preempt’ State Laws, they DO, EXCEPT for some circumstances, one such is an invasion at the border.
kj
For the left, Russians seem to be the source of all BadThink:
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/01/29/russians-nancy-pelosi-accuses-protesters-at-her-home-of-being-connected-to-putin/
Pelosi:
“But for [people protesting Israel’s actions]
to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message,
Mr. Putin’s message.
Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see.
Same thing with Ukraine.”
Astonishing.
All BadThink stems from Putin.