Running on empty

This blog post is going to be some short news bits.

Russia has basically shut-off gas to Germany. Today the EU announced a new gas deal with Azerbaijan, to increase gas imports to the EU. The deal will increase gas flowing from Azerbaijan to the EU from 8.2 billion cubic meters in 2021 to 12 billion cubic meters in 2022, with a goal to increase to 20 billion cubic meters by 2027.

Of course, in 2021 the EU imported 155 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 40% of that was from Russia. If my math is correct that means Russia was supplying 62 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe and while 12 billion cubic meters sounds positive, that’s a far ways from 62 billion cubic meters.

It took the Germans until mid-June to decide to restart coal plants, but still not their nuclear. Austria just decided to restart coal plants at the end of June. France had been on a green energy plan too and this year 28 of their 56 nuclear power plants were offline, although France has some plan to build new nuclear plants… by 2050… that’s not going to help them this winter.

Here’s a report, Europe’s plans to replace Russian gas are deemed ‘wildly optimistic’ — and could hammer its economy, from June 29th:

“The European Union’s best shot at replacing Russian gas imports this year is likely to miss the mark, analysts predict, exerting further pressure on the region’s economy.”

“The EU plans to replace two-thirds of Russian gas imports by the end of the year, as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to wage on.”

“The shift away from the country’s gas supplies became even more urgent after the country’s state-backed Gazprom reduced flows to Europe by 60%, citing a delay to repairs on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that runs to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.”

“The European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, will meet with EU energy ministers on Monday to discuss potential coordinated measures, including demand reduction and contingency plans should the situation deteriorates further.”

Russia invaded Ukraine in February and the EU leaders are just now jumping into panic mode about Russia cutting off gas, even though this seemed obvious once the EU and US started imposing punishing sanctions on Russia. Russia has now basically given Europe a big middle finger. Here’s a Reuters report from today: Exclusive: Russia’s Gazprom tells European buyers gas supply halt beyond its control

In other gas and oil news, President Biden made a trip to Saudi Arabia to grovel trying to make a deal to import more oil rather than unleash Americans fossil fuel. He came home empty-handed and facing backlash from within his own party, who are still outraged about the assassination of journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who is believed to have been murdered by agents of the Saudi government.

As a reminder, during President Trump’s presidency America became energy independent for the first time in my life and here were are not even two years later and the American president is groveling to despots and autocrats trying to cut deals to import more oil.

These are all deliberate choices that President Biden and European leaders have made to outsource critical energy needs, all to cling to the green energy agenda. They have placed the green agenda above their own national security.

I’m not very optimistic that leaders in the free world are really prepared to plan anything competently, let alone “defend democracy” and western civilization.