Vladimir
Putin’s Green Allies
West Tries To Loosen Russia’s Gas
Grip
Editor's Note: It is my belief Putin will not be dissuaded
at all, no matter what PR agreements he signs or verbally agrees to. His future
is at stake here. Furthermore, I believe his intransigence will be one of the
best things that could ever happen to the rest of the European powers. His
ability to control the price and amount of natural gas flow into the rest of
Europe will force them to stop listening to the lunatic green movement and
start fracking. That will be the end of Putin and his gangster cronies running
Russia, and set the stage for more to stand against one of the most irrational,
misanthropic and morally defective movements the world has ever known -
environmentalism - and the even more morally defective United Nations. RK
Few environmentalists would regard themselves as allies
of Vladimir Putin. Indeed, in their stout opposition to petroleum, which the
Russian president is using both as a piggy bank and a weapon for expanding his
power, it might appear that they are opponents. Such a view is superficial. In
many ways, both Mr. Putin’s Russia and the modern green movement are offshoots
of the collapse of the Soviet empire. They remain united against the old Soviet
enemy: free markets and free minds. --Peter Foster, Financial Post, 8 March 2014 (subscription required)
Western officials are scrambling to loosen Russia’s
energy stranglehold on Ukraine, the latest sign of growing pressure on Moscow
to end the crisis. The options being considered by officials from Brussels to
Washington include larger exports of U.S.-made natural gas, reversing the flow
of natural gas through pipelines from Western Europe back into Ukraine, and
accelerating plans across Europe to buy more energy from countries other than
Russia. “If no solution to this can be found,” European countries will “recast
their approach to energy and economic links with Russia over time,” U.K.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday. --Ian Talley and Amy Harder, The Wall Street Journal, 10 March 2014 (subscription
required)
The current conflict in Ukraine is just another reason
for European countries to develop their own shale gas industries, Molchanov
says. Those efforts have been sluggish so far; there is no commercial shale gas
production anywhere in Europe today. For example, Poland, the country that’s
been most active in shale gas, has only managed to drill about 50 exploration
wells to date, he says.“It’s a laughably small number compared to various
counties in North Dakota or Texas or Oklahoma where there can be thousands of
wells drilled per year,” Molchanov says. --Christopher Werth, New England Public Radio, 7 March 2014
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have
urged the US Congress to help them buy American natural gas and reduce their
dependence on Russia by loosening US export limits. In an unusually bold step,
the four countries’ambassadors to Washington sent joint letters to top lawmakers
in the Senate and the House of Representatives urging them to assist in
expediting exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe. “The presence of
US natural gas would be much welcome in central and eastern Europe, and
congressional action to expedite LNG exports to America’s allies would come at
a critically important time for the region,” they wrote in letters to Harry
Reid, Senate majority leader, and John Boehner, speaker of the House. --Barney
Jopson, Financial Times, 8 March 2014 (subscription required)
Apart from Poland, other [European] nations have been in
no hurry. The entire nation of Hungary is sitting on what should be a
prospective shale development given their long history of oil and gas. But they
have been delaying shale so long that most companies have given up. Slovakia is
in even an more precarious position where Russia supplies 71% of their gas, yet
they too were in no rush whatsoever to even contemplate shale gas. But it’s the
Czech Republic, almost 100% supplied by Russia who seem to suddenly sound
hypocritical in the extreme. The US should tell the Czech Republic and those
like them, to take a hike in the Carpathians. God, and the United States,
should only help those who help themselves. --Nick Grealy, No Hot Air, 9 March 2014
One silver lining—or sliver of a lining—from the Russian
invasion of Crimea is that it may awaken Western Europe from its strategic
slumbers. A sign of hope came Sunday when British Foreign Secretary William
Hague said that European leaders may seek to buy more natural gas from the
United States. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 10 March 2014 (subscription
required)
Ukrainian plans for expanding Black Sea natural gas
output have been thrown into doubt by Russia’s seizure of Crimea, a region
linked to most of Ukraine’s offshore developments. Promising developments
include the Odessa gas field where plans call for output of more than a billion
cubic metres of gas by 2015. But uncertainty clouds such plans after Russia
effectively seized control of Crimea following last month’s ouster of Ukraine’s
pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich. “Their (Ukraine’s) high hopes of
increasing offshore gas production may fade with the Crimea referendum,”
Mikhail Korchemkin at East European Gas Analysis told Reuters. --Reuters, 7 March 2014
Top on the list of potential venues for the next shale
boom are China, Russia and Argentina, but the world’s next shale revolution
likely will be in Australia, which appears to be the most attractive place for
companies to pursue tight oil and gas, according to a Lux Research analysis
released recently. “Australia [has] the characteristics conducive to successful
commercial production, which other front-runners like Argentina, China, U.K.,
and Poland lack. This includes existing infrastructure, low population density
in key shale plays, and citizens who welcome resource extraction through its
long mining legacy,” the report said. --BusinessDay Online, 8 March 2014
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