The Oil Drum: Europe | Gas crisis: Is Gazprom really expecting Europe to take its side against Ukraine?

86 comments on Gas crisis: Is Gazprom really expecting Europe to take its side against Ukraine?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

dissident on January 13, 2009 - 4:24pm

It looks like the clowns running the EU actually believe they will force Russia to export its gas via Nabucco. What a bunch of retards.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

garyp on January 13, 2009 - 8:26pm

You are Vladimir Putin and I claim my five pounds.

I'd suggest the reality goes something like this:

Russia: Wants to regain what it considers as its rightful place as a world superpower. In doing this it wants to regain a measure of control over at least eastern europe. It's therefore flexing its energy weapon and trying to intimidate into getting others to agree with it, or else. It also needs the cash that higher prices would bring and doesn't like the current depressed state of world trade.

Ukraine: Has little in the way of power, but wants to remain independent from its larger neighbour and realises the transit pipelines are a good mechanism. It simply considered any gas going through the pipe as its first, with any excess going to europe. It will pay a little cash for the gas, but as for market rates, forget it.

Europe: Considers both russia and ukraine as squabbling children with gangster pretensions. It wishes both would learn the game of international trade and grow up. It also probably thinks it can get the gas via other sources and is metaphorically tapping its foot and wondering when those communist twits are going to learn the customer is always right.

All are probably mistaken to a degree, about the reality and the beliefs of the others. Next step? Blowing up some pipelines.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

mcgowanmc on January 14, 2009 - 11:42am

Dissident is correct.

Russia is not changing the rules of the game as
it wakes up in the morning as the West has been doing
since Khodorkovsky was arrested for trying to sell
YUKOS to XOM.

At this point (!) Russia became the enemy of the West.

The West and the West alone is authorized to pay what it wants, when it wants, with what it wants for however much it wants for
oil/gas.

Anyone else trying this will be shot out of the saddle.

but now the guy in the saddle has nukes, has paid it's debts from
the czar and WWI and II to the Club of Rome and per Georgia
will defend it's interests.

You want confrontation, step right up and pretend that Russia
is Iraq.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

mcgowanmc on January 14, 2009 - 11:03am

Per Nabucco.

Turkey now wants 15% of the gas that transits.

Too bad the EU has been keeping Turkey at arm's length.

the Goeben Redux:

The British did not immediately realize the importance of the Goeben's actions. The initial reaction to the eastward course of Goeben was relief, as the German ship would no longer threaten French transports. The Royal Navy would have, however, one more chance to stop Goeben before it reached Turkey.

Completed in 1912, Goeben served in the German Navy until 1915, then in the Ottoman until 1918. She survived the collapse of both empires and the scuttling of her brethren at Scapa Flow to serve in the Turkish Navy between 1930 and 1954. This thirty year period of active duty service puts Goeben slighty behind some of her contemporaries (USS Arkansas, the South American dreadnoughts), but she played a more important role in world history than virtually any other battleship of the dreadnought era.

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/03/tales-of-sea-goeben-part-ii.html

Comments can no longer be added to this story.