[HN Gopher] Germany has seized control of Gazprom Germania
___________________________________________________________________
Germany has seized control of Gazprom Germania
Author : guard0g
Score : 256 points
Date : 2022-04-05 10:48 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Only tangential to the article, but does anyone find risky that
| absolutely critical services depend on one or two foreign private
| companies?
|
| And other than losing money, what would be the consequences of
| Gazprom pulling out of Germany completely? I'm guessing that
| Russia just doesn't have enough economic leverage to do so.
| gumby wrote:
| The theory is that if the two countries depend on each other
| deeply they will avoid disputes that would disrupt that
| relationship. That hasn't worked out so well in this case, but
| has worked well IMHO to break the cycle of warfare in Western
| Europe over the last 70 years or so, the longest stretch of
| peace in in that region for over a thousand years or longer.
| Under a rational actor/game theoretic model that is the most
| likely outcome.
|
| Russia decided to use the gas as a weapon and germany decided
| to use its financial structure (I.e. its ties to many other
| countries) as a weapon back. In the medium and long term I
| think Russia needs germany more than the other way around.
|
| More broadly: your business is in trouble if it only has a
| small number of customers or suppliers. That diversity provides
| resilience. In geopolitical terms, it's it's fine to have only
| overseas suppliers (and even good from a comparative advantage
| perspective) as long as they aren't correlated. Germany's bet
| (wrong) was that making an oversized commitment on Russia would
| provide a welcome guarantee to reduce the chance of
| isolationism, That didn't work. But Russia made the opposite
| bet: that the commitment meant they had a stranglehold on
| Germany. But Germany is too rich and has too many friends for
| that to be any more than a transient threat.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Do you think it is fine for EDF to operate 8 nuclear plants of
| UK, "outside EU"? Do you think it is fine for Gmail to suppress
| email accounts of entire companies in Europe? Especially if
| they already did it for individuals and their work Gmail.
|
| I think we live in a dangerously intertwined world, and a bit
| of email redundancy in each country would be quite important.
| hugi wrote:
| It's nice to see Germany start working towards energy
| independence. I think it's a crucial factor for both national
| security and a faster migration to more environmentally friendly
| energy sources.
| bitL wrote:
| 10 years too late... It's going to be Eldorado for US companies
| buying bankrupting German companies for cheap...
| durnygbur wrote:
| yes please
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Angela Merkel is squarely to blame here. She was warned about
| he dangers for the 16 years she was chancellor of Germany,
| and instead of diversifying, doubled down on Russian oil and
| gas, and ordered the closure of the remaining nuclear plants.
| So be it. The people voted for her, and apparently Germans in
| general are rather anti-nuclear.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Angela Merkel did not want to close the plants, but the
| public opinion forced her hand. The people wanted this.
| baq wrote:
| perhaps she didn't properly explain that Putin can and
| will shut off the supply... or maybe she herself couldn't
| believe that he's that much of a thug.
| sho_hn wrote:
| OP's "the people wanted this" hints at a complicated
| background. Getting out of nuclear is a long-running
| social movement in Germany, with Chernobyl as a decisive
| event. There's a caste of of politicians and private
| individuals for whom this is generation-defining/a
| founding myth. It's the kind of thing that arthouse
| movies (e.g. "Das Ding am Deich") and social
| documentaries are made about. Discussing, for example,
| the particular issues of adolescents raised by parents
| who used to live at the protests parties in the 80s.
|
| It bubbled over with Fukushima, the a roiling and boiling
| mid-life crisis for an entire subculture. Consequences or
| the Russia variable provided little resistance to the
| Zeitgeist - the biggest "I told you so" in decades. There
| was no planning to be done.
| j-krieger wrote:
| It's almost like spending half of your life and career
| under the umbrella of the USSR makes people vulnerable to
| be influenced by russian forces.
| logifail wrote:
| > energy independence
|
| We use LPG gas (from a tank buried at the bottom of the garden)
| feeding a gas boiler to heat our house.
|
| I'm all for energy independence, and would love to switch to a
| more environmentally-friendly energy source, but I'm deeply
| concerned about how much this will cost me, and even if I did
| have the money, based on reports in local media, getting a
| heating engineer in would take many months.
|
| Half a continent wants to switch energy supply "now" _and_ the
| world was already suffering a serious supply chain crisis.
| Changing quickly may simply not be possible, never mind
| affordable.
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| We are in Germany and switched to a heatpump system 4 years
| ago through incentives over the "Marktanreizprogramm" we got
| over 45% of the costs reimbursed. It's not even only on the
| supply chain crisis it's simply ramping up production and
| training installers because everyone was totally fine with
| just doing oil and gas for a long time but now everyone
| scrambles. Shortsightness not only from the state but
| everyday people and businesses. Thank god for being Links-
| Grun versifft.
| holoduke wrote:
| For our detached house the price of a heatpump setup is
| about 40.000 euros. We decided to stick with gass for a
| while. At some point a electrical heat unit would be
| better. Very inefficient, but with solar and batteries a
| lot cheaper than a heatpump. About 15.000 euros.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| That's interesting, so the tank is permanent and you refill
| it somehow? If yes, how often? Can you do the same thing with
| natural gas? Does the place you live in have natural gas?
| maxerickson wrote:
| It depends on the heating need and size of the tank.
|
| In the US, there is nothing unusual about a 1,000 gallon
| tank that you might fill twice a year.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Not your parent poster, but the tanks are commonly
| installed above-ground in the rural USA. It is propane
| (C3H8), which is liquid under pressure. Tanks are refilled
| as needed depending on usage via a tanker truck. I assume
| this is monthly but I don't personally have one.
|
| In the US, natural gas normally refers to methane (CH4)
| heating, attached to a city methane heating grid. I pay a
| monthly bill per cubic foot of methane burned. Currently my
| water heater and furnace are methane. I live near Kansas
| City.
| tssva wrote:
| As residential development continues to expand and
| natural gas delivery systems do not to match in many
| areas the use of propane has moved beyond the rural US. I
| have a house in a suburban neighborhood developed in the
| last 10 years and all the houses have buried propane
| tanks instead of natural gas hookups. The propane fuels
| heating systems, hot water heaters and stove tops. Most
| have grills and fire pits also attached. I have all those
| plus the propane fuels an emergency whole house
| generator.
|
| How often tanks are refilled depends upon your particular
| usage pattern and the time of year. Refills can occur on
| demand, on an automatic basis determined by looking at
| your past usage patterns or as in my case triggered by an
| IoT connected meter which notifies my propane supplier
| when my tanks fall below a pre-determined level.
| Depending on the time of year it can be 3 months or 6
| months between fills.
| maxerickson wrote:
| A township I lived in had a provision against natural gas
| in the master plan.
|
| Not sure if it was an actual blocker, or just a statement
| that there was no plan to install infrastructure.
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends on tank size and usage. I have small tank I
| use just for a range and it gets filled once a year--I
| use less than the minimum.
| logifail wrote:
| > the tank is permanent and you refill it somehow? If yes,
| how often?
|
| Yup, dug into the ground when the house was built, and
| refilled basically once every two years ever since.
|
| Given I used to be a lab chemist, it's oddly fascinating
| watching the tanker drive up and then the best part of
| 1000kg of propane is pumped into a tank under part of your
| garden...
|
| We were told "no naked flames within 3m of the tank" - we
| BBQ at the other end of the garden :)
| recuter wrote:
| Yeah, they got top minds on this. Top. Minds.
|
| Nuclear canceled by the Green Party and pre-March went all in
| on Russian oil and gas.
| DasIch wrote:
| Gas is used primarily by heating or industrial processes that
| require it. It can't be meaningfully substituted with
| anything else in the short term.
|
| To some extent you can't even substitute with gas from other
| sources because of lack of (connections to) LNG terminals.
| makomk wrote:
| The lack of both LNG terminals and adequate connections to
| ones in other countries is a big part of what people mean
| when they say Germany went all in on Russian gas. They
| physically cannot import enough gas from other sources, as
| I understand it, and this was an intentional and knowing
| decision despite warnings from other counties.
| recuter wrote:
| I am not a Trump fan, but I do enjoy me some, how you
| guys say, _schadenfreude_ :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Nuclear canceled by the Green Party
|
| .. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another.
|
| (Germany has oddly lagged in deploying renewables, though.
| Possibly due to lack of offshore sites, meaning that wind
| farms have to be deployed against the efforts of NIMBYs)
| cjrp wrote:
| Surely Germany's a big enough (and sparsely-populated
| enough) country that wind farms can go somewhere without
| complaint?
| kijin wrote:
| Germany is about 15% smaller than California, but with
| more than twice the population. Not exactly what I'd call
| "sparsely populated".
| [deleted]
| sascha_sl wrote:
| It's an ongoing joke that a mandate to place wind farms
| 2km from populated areas left no space at for wind farms
| in that state.
|
| It's not actually sparsely populated at all.
| majewsky wrote:
| After Fukushima, nuclear was canceled by the conservatives
| (the Merkel II government), when the Green Party was not
| part of the government. The Green Party _did_ cancel
| nuclear, but in the year 2000. Their timeline called for
| the shutdown of the last nuclear power plants in the 2020s,
| which would have been ample time to build up enough
| replacement capacity from renewables. But that plan was
| neutered by the Merkel governments crippling the buildup of
| renewables for 16 years.
|
| Which is not to say there's not also NIMBYism. There is in
| fact a ton of opposition to buildup of renewables from both
| conservative-leaning citizens and left/green-leaning
| advocacy groups.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _>.. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another._
|
| The statistical risks from nuclear actually causing a
| disaster are absolutely tiny in comparison, especially
| considering the upsides, but the Germans and Austrians want
| to be EU's nuclear doomers for shits and giggles just
| because Chernobyl and Fukushima happened, even though so
| many nuclear plants worldwide have run for decades without
| issue.
|
| But sucking on the sweeet teat of Putin's gas for decades
| and burning it was the "greener" alternative for them
| instead.
| piokoch wrote:
| "After Fukushima" is the funniest part of this. Baltic and
| North seas are well known from their gigantic tsunami
| waves.
| kuschku wrote:
| German Nuclear plants are usually on rivers, and as we've
| seen in the past year, those can have huge floods
| destroying everything around. You don't want your nuclear
| plant's backup generators to look like Ahrweiler.
| pvaldes wrote:
| If you think that tsunamis are funny you will love the
| concept of melting ice in the arctic messing with all the
| sea currents. That would be hilarious (except for the
| humans, of course).
| raverbashing wrote:
| > .. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another.
|
| We don't stop flying after planes get into an accident. We
| evaluate and improve our designs and controls
|
| But with nuclear with go with knee-jerk reaction for some
| reason
| blywi wrote:
| There's more to the story than that.
|
| The last German government before Merkel came to power,
| was a coalition between the Green party and the Social-
| Democrats (SPD), this government decided to phase-out
| nuclear power in Germany in favor of renewable energy by
| limiting the running time of existing nuclear power
| plants.
|
| The next German government was a coalition between
| conservative CDU under Merkel and SPD, and the nuclear
| phase-out remained untouched.
|
| But when Merkel won the federal elections a second time
| and was able to form a coalition with the Liberal-
| Democrats (FDP) replacing of the SPD as a coalition
| partner, who had voted in favor of the nuclear phase-out,
| they decided to cancel the nuclear phase-out.
|
| This happened in the autumn of 2010 and was a
| controversial decision for the public opinion. When
| Fukushima happened half year later it was widely seen as
| a confirmation of the inherent risks of nuclear energy
| and thus the Green party's energy politics, not because
| Germany is especially prone to Tsunamis, but because it
| showed that it's impossible to rule out and plan for
| every possible dangerous situation in advance, and that
| even a high-tech country like Japan, on a comparable
| technical level to Germany, was not able to stop the
| meltdowns.
|
| Elections in federal states shortly after Fukushima
| resulted in a landslide loss for Merkel's CDU and big
| wins for the Green party, the CDU losing one of its
| stronghold states [1] it had before held constantly for
| 58 years.
|
| As far as I remember Merkel foresaw the public reaction
| and almost immediately after Fukushima voiced out in
| favor of reversing the cancelation of the nuclear phase-
| out, but could only get a solid backing in her party,
| after the losses in the federal state elections.
|
| [1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/-fukushima-strahlt-bis-
| baden-wu...
| jaywalk wrote:
| > But with nuclear with go with knee-jerk reaction for
| some reason
|
| That reason is propaganda. The anti-nuclear people use
| anything they can to whip people up into an irrational
| frenzy whenever anything happens, and it has worked
| pretty well.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Uranium is also imported. Overall the EU gets 20% of its
| uranium from Russia and another 20% from Kazakhstan, which is
| economically deeply tied with Russia.
| gruturo wrote:
| This is irrelevant. Uranium, being unbelievably energy
| dense, is truly trivial to ship in meaningful quantities
| from anywhere in the world. Australia has the world's
| biggest reserves for example. Plenty of ways to acquire
| uranium without relying (and financially benefiting) from
| putler or order nondemocratic regimes.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Yeah, they got top minds on this. Top. Minds._
|
| Top men:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRP0MBNoieY
| gumby wrote:
| Nuclear wasn't cancelled by the greens. And anyway germany
| imports electricity from France and Czech which was generated
| by nukes.
| plantain wrote:
| It looks like the Green Party didn't have a single minister
| in 2016 when they turned off all the nuclear post-Fukushima -
| so why would the Green party be responsible?
|
| Who has been in power for the last 20 years exactly that
| could have built renewable power instead of quadrupling down
| on Russian gas? It wasn't the Green party.
| baq wrote:
| makes you think if Green Party is also financed by Russia...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I would suppose so, if you see a relatively big
| organization promoting things that you want to happen why
| wouldn't you finance them?
|
| That Russia would finance the Greens doesn't automatically
| what the Greens advocate for wrong, or that the Greens are
| actually traitors, what it does is twofold - start a
| process whereby the Greens can over time be corrupted (via
| the money spout), and indicate that whatever the Greens are
| doing there may be unintended side effects which would be
| of benefit to Russia.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Greens are not financed by Russia, this is publicly
| available information. Neither they did anything that could
| look like a support of Russian agenda.
| baq wrote:
| anti-nuclear is pro-fossil. I'm saying that russian psy-
| ops organize both sides of protesting factions in e.g.
| Qanon, yellow vests in France, etc. - why wouldn't they
| covertly finance anti-nuclear if they overtly finance
| pro-fossil? Greens are pro-environment, but don't offer
| substitute energy sources (because it isn't possible to
| offer them, a different discussion) - exactly the kind of
| turmoil Russia thrives in. but then, maybe the FSB's just
| lucky here.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| > anti-nuclear is pro-fossil
|
| Wrong and baseless. It is possible to simultaneously
| reduce nuclear and fossil components in the energy
| balance and this is exactly what is happening.
|
| > why wouldn't they covertly finance anti-nuclear if they
| overtly finance pro-fossil?
|
| Greens in Germany are established political party with
| clear anti-Putin positioning. Financing of political
| parties in Germany is transparent and has sufficient
| oversight, so there's neither possibility nor any sense
| to covertly finance them.
|
| > Greens are pro-environment, but don't offer substitute
| energy sources
|
| Where did you get that from?
| archerx wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if the Greens are actually funded by
| petrol companies because everything they do seems to benefit
| them in the end. In Switzerland the Greens are trying to be
| as dumb as the German ones.
| neuronic wrote:
| There are dumb aspects about the German Greens ("Veggie
| Day") but they do a good job moving Germany into the right
| energy direction today. Your criticism is generally
| unwarranted and the data shows it.
|
| I think we shouldn't use words like "dumb" at all because
| we are all trying to bring about the most sensible, safe
| and productive energy future for our nations. These nations
| have different circumstances and demands and some are more
| influenced by corrupt individuals than others.
|
| With regard to the Greens, what exactly is dumb? It can't
| be the move away from nuclear because first of all, that
| was decided by Merkel's CDU long ago and second, it is
| economically the _only_ sensible thing to do in 2022. It 's
| what the MARKET dictates. Capitalism at work because no one
| will pay for the cost of building and running a nuclear
| plant while renewables are already working and massively
| cheaper to build, run and INSURE.
|
| I'm not even talking about technology, safety or waste
| disposal at all. There is no reason to even go there
| because today NO energy provider in their right mind will
| build new nuclear plants today (and they won't matter
| anyway because building one takes 10+ years). The decision
| is a result of cost and not technological misunderstanding
| or ignorance.
|
| Most days, Germany already produces and _consumes_ >50% of
| renewable energy and it will only accelerate:
| https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
|
| On the other hand, France's electricity briefly cost more
| than >EUR2900/MWh yesterday (as opposed to EUR101/MWh in
| Germany) due to their reliance on few but old nuclear
| plants with high safety standards which go offline quite
| often. France's electricity shortly was the most expensive
| of all time in the world yesterday.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/tw656a/zwischen_8_und_
| 9...
|
| Anyone who actually supports new nuclear power plants today
| shamefully displays their utter ignorance of the modern
| energy market. It is COST that is prohibitive first and
| foremost. It will always be a LOSS operation. The market
| dictates the use of distributed renewable energy, which
| also prevents nearly all other issues associated with
| nuclear. Nice side effect.
|
| In fact, Germany's real big issues are bureaucracy and
| NIMBYs but thanks to the current crisis those will
| hopefully be solved within the next years.
| winkeltripel wrote:
| That market needs to be guided away from fossil fuels.
| How would such a market cover solar and wind when they
| dont make enough? Batteries? Huge hydro storage? That
| sounds more expensive than nuclear.
| recuter wrote:
| > I'm not even talking about technology, safety or waste
| disposal at all. There is no reason to even go there
| because today NO energy provider in their right mind will
| build new nuclear plants today (and they won't matter
| anyway because building one takes 10+ years). The
| decision is a result of cost and not technological
| misunderstanding or ignorance.
|
| Yes, obviously. German chocolate
| manufacturer Ritter Sport has decided to continue working
| in Russia. According to Ritter Sport, about 7% of its
| business is in the Russian market.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schroder#Relationsh
| ip_...
|
| Money makes the world go around. You got in bed with
| Russia for cheap energy, which you enjoyed for a decade
| or two, and it cost you an increase in your defense
| spending and some dead Ukrainians.
|
| Lets hope that's all it will cost you. Of course you had
| no choice, it is the invisible hand.
| recuter wrote:
| Old people vote more. Old hippies vote harder. Hippies are
| impressionable and watched a lot of Hollywood movies like:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome
|
| And more recently:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)
|
| Jane Fonda is a sexy grandma who still got it, she stopped
| the war in Vietnam and got us in shape. With our powers
| combined, we are Captain Planet? We were elected to lead
| not to read!
|
| Here is an additional thought: if you dedicate an entire
| party completely and totally to solving one problem, what
| happens to them if the problem actually gets solved?
|
| Seems like a single issue politician is exclusively
| incentivized to shift blame in order to get re-elected
| rather than, you know, do anything constructive.
|
| France is something like 70%+ nuclear powered, they got it
| all sorted for the rest of the century. Not much for the
| greenie weenies to do.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when Chernobyl was on the
| news, not a fictionalised version. The initial "discard
| all milk production across Europe" phase lasted a few
| weeks, but the last restrictions in the UK took 26 years
| to lift: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
| cumbria-18299228
|
| (it's also been in the news recently as it was right in
| the middle of the Russian assault on Kyiv!)
|
| The French nuclear mix is currently 58% :
| https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-
| energ... because a large number of reactors are offline:
| https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1549986/macron-
| france...
|
| There are two problems with nuclear power:
|
| - a "black swan" low probability risk of something really
| bad happening, despite everyone saying it can't happen,
| and poisoning the surrounding area
|
| - it's expensive, takes a long time to build, and can
| develop expensive problems. Many of the French reactors
| are approaching the end of their 50 year design life.
|
| That said, it was definitely a mistake for Germany to
| close plants without a specific safety risk.
| recuter wrote:
| Germany is the 4th largest economy in the world with
| pretty regular budget surpluses. I think that's what you
| might call penny wise pound foolish, is there a saying
| like that in German?
|
| Black swan events are nothing to make light of. I mean
| technically there's also a "black swan" risk of a meteor
| destroying the earth or monkeys flying out of my butt.
|
| I guess they aren't that good at that whole engineering
| thing anymore and just can't handle this as well as the
| French. ;)
| winkeltripel wrote:
| My argument for nuclear: the alternative low-carbon base
| load is grid-scale lithium ion batteries. That tech is
| ,(AFAIK) 10 years out from reaching both the scale and
| price point needed. Also note that solar and wind need
| enormous amounts of land.
| nix23 wrote:
| But in Switzerland the population voted against nuclear
| energy, and with that we "the people" are as stupid as the
| green party, right?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| People can be easily scared into doing very stupid things
| long term. Fear is by far the easiest way to manipulate,
| look at brexit, Trump etc.
|
| Swiss are generally quite smart but have emotions just
| like everybody else, even if it may not seem so upon
| first encounter. From what I recall they already buy LNG
| mainly from US so at least this part is not so bad re
| current situation.
| baq wrote:
| somebody convinced the Swiss that benefits are not worth
| the risk and/or costs; it's quite clear now that some of
| the risk of being reliant on gas was... understated. the
| greens, for all my love of the environment for the sake
| of my grandkids, are blind to geopolitics, and I used to
| think this is just naivety; I'm starting to doubt that
| considering the extent of FSB's and GRU's influence.
| recuter wrote:
| Yes.
| archerx wrote:
| >'and with that we "the people" are as stupid as the
| green party, right?'
|
| Yes.
| nix23 wrote:
| But we can import it from france and we have hydro, why
| even care about the nuclear-waste and all the negative
| sides of it.
|
| https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-get-75--of-power-from-
| ren...
| archerx wrote:
| Why should we be dependent on France? Nuclear waste is a
| boogie man to scare hippies at night, almost 96% of fuel
| rods can be recycled and fuel rods have a life cycle of
| 5-10 years while not needing that many to run a reactor.
| We could be researching and investing in modern nuclear
| tech that solve these problems until fusion is viable.
| Also with petrol there was a lot of waste but we learned
| to process it and turn it into a valuable resource, maybe
| the same could happen for nuclear.
|
| Hydro while interesting it is awful for the environment.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Why should we be dependent on France?
|
| Because Switzerland is dependent on like everything? The
| same could be said about steel, food, chips, chemicals,
| minerals, fertilizer, oils, gas...just about everything,
| yes we produce stuff but nearly nothing from the ground
| up, with the exception of Alp-Cheese and Buendnerfleisch
| ;)
|
| >Hydro while interesting it is awful for the environment.
|
| Switzerland then must have terrible environmental
| problems.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Switzerland
|
| high share of hydroelectricity (59.6%)
| recuter wrote:
| Nuclear Power - Bad from inside Switzerland, Okie Dokie
| from France.
|
| Their reactor in Bugey is like 200km from the one you're
| shutting down early.
|
| Man.. it would sure be funny if France elected some
| eccentric far right character for additional excitement.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Okie Dokie for France.
|
| Yes why not? They take the risk, we pay them for.
|
| >eccentric far right character for additional excitement.
|
| Is the far right not happy making money?
| recuter wrote:
| Your plan is to sit in the dark while the radiation
| drifts across the imaginary line that is your border?
| Well, at least you're honest. Here I thought we were
| concerned about going green and the planet and such.
|
| > Is the far right not happy making money?
|
| You know Mr Putin could have just stayed on the throne
| collecting hundreds of billions a year doing nothing.
| Nord Stream 2 was weeks away from being flipped on, this
| was boom times for Russia.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Your plan is to sit in the dark while the radiation
| drifts across the imaginary line that is your border?
|
| You know how small Switzerland is? One accident and whole
| Switzerland could be polluted at once.
|
| >You know Mr Putin could have just stayed
|
| Not sure how that has anything todo with a far right
| french politician.
|
| >Nord Stream 2 was weeks away from being flipped on
|
| And would have been probably flipped off, after what
| happened.
| recuter wrote:
| > You know how small Switzerland is? One accident and
| whole Switzerland could be polluted at once.
|
| Well precisely. And Bugey is so close might as well be in
| Switzerland, heh. Atoms don't know about our imaginary
| lines.
|
| > And would have been probably flipped off, after what
| happened.
|
| I'm saying instead of collecting riches he opted to
| invade. It is a bummer but sometimes people are not
| rational actors, even in Europe it turns out.
|
| > Not sure how that has anything todo with a far right
| french politician.
|
| Generally far right movements have an affinity with
| Russia/Putin. You don't need to believe some unproven (or
| in some cases proven) theory about them being bankrolled
| by him.
|
| Le Pen happens to have known ties but you can disregard
| this completely if you prefer. What I think you would
| find very interesting and somewhat alarming is the
| attitudes and political winds currently blowing even in
| your civilized neighbor France. Ask a French person first
| hand to lay it out.
|
| It is relevant to your interests, especially now that you
| depend on them for energy. I know, fortress Switzerland,
| not used to this, but it is an important lesson to learn
| right now. Please don't repeat the mistakes of Germans.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Atoms don't know about our imaginary lines.
|
| 200km less...that's massive for Switzerland
|
| >Generally far right movements have an affinity with
| Russia/Putin.
|
| Sorry but that's just a wannabe attempt...let's stop
| here, not worth my time, for example in Germany it was
| the left.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| You're not wrong but I don't think they're the only
| backers. The anti-nuke movement is a rat's nest of perverse
| influences.
| vimy wrote:
| Gazprom funds green NGOs in Europe. The dogmatic anti-
| nuclear energy minister in Belgium has ties to Gazprom.
| Europe gets 40 % of their gas from Russia. In the 90s most
| of the gas came from Europe itself until all those wells
| shut down under Green pressure.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Not just some petrol companies, by Gazprom itself:
| https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-
| governme...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That's not a green group, it's just a front for Gazprom.
|
| Just like the fake "Whale conservation" group fighting
| wind power off Nantucket is a front.
|
| If you want to criticize something as large as the
| Environmental movement, and you can't even find one real
| example to cite then maybe that means something.
|
| If you can't criticize them, don't bring up people that
| are larping as them for their own ends.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| But that is entirely the point - the environmentalists as
| a whole are not the problem, the problem is the groups
| that usurp the mantle and push for policy contrary to the
| wider group's agenda. I'm not criticizing people who
| fight against pollution, animal cruelty, and fossil fuel
| abuse; I'm criticizing people pretending to be
| environmentalists yet lobbying for fossil fuel increase
| and dismantling cleaner alternatives.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-face-of-the-
| anti-n...
| dxuh wrote:
| Even though it's very often stupidity instead of evilness,
| I really think that they are not stupid. They started as a
| pacifist party and now they passed the largest defence
| budget since WW2. You don't do that by accident. I think
| most of what they represent is just a fashionable front.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| For Germany as a whole I cannot speak, but it is an
| extremely common thing, yes, whether they know it or not.
|
| * Greenpeace Germany has a gas division. They've now split
| it off and officially only own 5 shares (while being
| headquartered in the exact same building, by the exact same
| Greenpeace members):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy
|
| * Companies like Total have made use of their enormous war
| chest to take control of multiple organisations that push
| wind & solar power (https://www.theguardian.com/environment
| /2015/jan/22/fossil-f...), knowing full well it cannot
| cover all of our energy needs and knowing they will be here
| to sell natural gas, continuing the use of fossil fuels.
|
| * Anti nuclear organizations are very often bankrolled by
| large oil lobbies (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverst
| ein/2016/07/13/are-f...,
| https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear), once
| again, pushing to get nuclear replaced with natural gas.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I've bought gas from various "green" energy suppliers
| over the years. Generally, they need to offer it for
| people that need both, even if their main aim is
| expanding solar or wind power.
|
| Some, like this example, go a little further and try to
| mix in hydrogen or biogas to reduce carbon output, or
| offset the carbon in some way, but even when they didn't,
| it was still greener than the alternatives on the market
| and a profitable business advancing their professed
| agenda.
|
| I wish nuclear fans would apply their ridiculously high
| standards for what they consider green energy to nuclear
| as well rather than just sabotage any attempt at
| advancing renewable energy with snide gotcha arguments.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Don't get me wrong: I am all for the presence of
| renewables in our energy mix. Solar at the individual
| house level is a great option, and making use of it in
| other spaces that are currently useless would be great.
| (Lining the top of parking lots to provide shade and
| electricity is a great option). Wind turbines are a bit
| more debatable, but as it stands, still provides a good
| option for some intermittent but good enough power.
|
| But know that your mindless antinuclearism is going to be
| our downfall. Our only options for baseload generation as
| it stands are nuclear and gas. And by protesting nuclear,
| you are giving oil companies a large avenue to keep
| fucking us all over. Rejecting nuclear at all costs right
| now in an attempt to get some renewable only future is
| madness. It is only leading us further down the hole of
| global warming. The only sabotage happening here is
| organisations like greenpeace literally committing acts
| of terrorism against nuclear plants. No-one wants to go
| nuclear+gas.
|
| Your mention of hydrogen makes you even more of a useful
| idiot for oil companies. Hydrogen does NOT work. We get
| 27% efficiency when it comes to storing it and using it
| as power. P2G2P is 50% at best. And while STEPs are a
| great solution for storage, we've used most of it. Unless
| you're looking to drown Bavaria to make a big lake.
|
| Build a ton of nuclear plants. Move as many countries as
| possible away from gas and coal. Once that's done, I'm
| more than happy for all of us to think of alternatives
| for nuclear.
| [deleted]
| tmalsburg2 wrote:
| Where "energy independence" means that Germany becomes
| dependent on much more expensive LGN from the US. This may
| still be better than what Germany has now but it's not
| independence.
| zirror wrote:
| It's a step in the right direction, isn't it? LNG can also be
| imported from other countries and, in the long run, gas
| dependence should be massively reduced once gas-powered
| heating is replaced by electronic heading via heat pumps or
| something like that.
| belorn wrote:
| Start? They have been spending ~$30 billions a year on green
| energy subsidies for the last 20 years, and a little less than
| double that for the total energy subsidies. It should be well
| over a trillion dollars in tax money going into the energy
| sector this century, which is by far more than any other
| country in EU.
|
| The energy sector get almost as much subsidies as the total
| funding of the Germany military, 1.5% vs 2% of BNP.
|
| It would be interesting to know how much more tax money is
| needed for an independent and environmentally friendly energy
| grid if they just continue as they done in the past.
| [deleted]
| le-mark wrote:
| > Germany is now in the "early warning phase" of its energy
| emergency plan,
|
| I'm not sure what the levels are, seems like they'd be at a
| higher level since the flows could stop at literally any time
| since they refused Putin's decree to pay in rubles.
| actinium226 wrote:
| No, Putin backed down on that one. It's not over yet but Russia
| doesn't want to turn the taps off by itself. It needs the money
| too badly (what do you think is propping up the Ruble) and also
| they need some deniability, some excuse, because if they turn
| it off unilaterally, it's hard to see it coming back on, at
| least not under the same circumstances
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I am _so_ pissed off on russians and putin for all this, I
| wouldn 't care if they turned this off immediately. Europe
| will handle the shock, few rough months, at least heating
| season is finishing fast it won't affect civilians.
|
| I know it would be probably very hard for businesses
| dependent on LNG but we need to move from russian gas fast,
| not have 10 year plan that will take 30 in reality.
|
| Every euro/USD paid will be mostly siphoned to re-building
| dictator's army. As much as they fucked up and still are
| fucking up now in Ukraine, next russian invasion may be much
| better executed. Let's not pay with our money for it, since
| his ultimate ambitions cover as much Europe as he will be
| allowed to grab and subjugate.
| Medowar wrote:
| More Background, why this is in fact important: Gazprom Germania
| is also a critical part of the german Gas-Market, because it owns
| the largest gas-Storage with 1/5 of total capacity in Germany,
| major Gas Pipelines and Platforms for trading the ressource. This
| is both through Sub-companies Wingas and Astora.
|
| It also has contracts with Gazprom in Russia with guaranteed
| Prices and Deliveries.
| maratc wrote:
| > It also has contracts with Gazprom in Russia with guaranteed
| Prices and Deliveries.
|
| Is anyone under an illusion that Gazprom in Russia will honor
| these contracts, now that their branch was seized? And if not,
| what methods are there to enforce these contracts?
|
| The Russians seized the planes, which can fly but need spares
| and checks. The Germans seized the pipelines and the storage.
| Both have some utility in the interim, but both are ultimately
| useless.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| "We seized your property under exigent circumstances, but you
| better honor your contracts rather than cancel them under
| exigent circumstances!"
|
| - NATO, apparently delusional
|
| The idea people will "honor" contracts while you're
| (illegally) seizing their property in effort to enact an
| economic siege of their nation is mental illness -- either
| delusions or megalomania. That strategy doesn't make sense.
|
| I'm personally sad to see how deluded US and EU leaders are.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while you're (illegally) seizing their property_
|
| This is nonsense. Gazprom Germania attempted an illegal
| transfer of ownership. From what I can tell, Germany isn't
| appropriating anything. It's just seizing control in a
| regulatory measure.
| maratc wrote:
| NATO has nothing to do with buying or selling gas.
| op00to wrote:
| I'm sorry, what did NATO seize again? It was Germany.
| Germany is not NATO. If you're going to participate in the
| discussion, at least keep your actors straight.
| kadoban wrote:
| Okay, then Russia can keep their gas and have even lower
| income of cash (which they need to pay debts, by the way).
| [deleted]
| neilwilson wrote:
| Why do they need to 'pay debts'?
|
| Russia has just had its foreign reserves frozen. Those
| are debts too, which the West has repudiated. Why
| shouldn't Russia do the same in reverse?
|
| Countries export solely to gain imports if they have any
| sense. If there are no imports to be had - due to
| sanctions - then there is no need to export. Far better,
| from Russia's point of view, that the oil is left in the
| ground, and the workers redeployed elsewhere. To the war
| effort for example.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| If those workers are fine with a substantial fail in
| their QoL. It's gonna be most painful for the oligarchs
| and people in their environment who are used to consuming
| massive amounts of foreign goods.
|
| Btw even the USSR which was generally much more autarkic
| couldn't survive without foreign currency for energy
| exports. What makes you think modern Russia could? Also
| it was illegal for workers to leave Russia back then,
| unlike now (so assuming there are countries willing to
| accept them they might be more likely to choose that over
| 'being redirected to work in the war industry'.
| [deleted]
| kadoban wrote:
| They _want_ to pay their debts, to preserve better
| borrowing terms in the future and to not look bad. If you
| research at all you'll see that they're actively trying
| to pay their debts to avoid default.
| maratc wrote:
| > then Russia can keep their gas
|
| I guess the answer to that would be "and Germany can keep
| their cash and maybe have to burn it to heat homes or
| generate electricity"?
|
| The war we're seeing (the economic war) is a point of
| mini-singularity, where a lot of we know to be true about
| the world is invalid. Such as an assumption that a state
| having debts will actually pay them.
| kadoban wrote:
| Except they're actively trying to pay them, so apparently
| it is true.
| dathinab wrote:
| > Is anyone under an illusion that Gazprom in Russia will
| honor these contracts, now that their branch was seized?
|
| In this case because both parties need it (for now) even
| through currently neither of them wants it. (Russia needs the
| money, Germany the Gas, if Russia could afford it they would
| already have cut of Gas to destabilize Germany. If Germany
| could afford it they would already have cut payments to force
| Russia to stop the war.)
|
| Also I think some people misunderstand what sizing means in
| this context it doesn't mean "hey this is now ours" but is
| much more subtle and complex, and most important temporary by
| nature.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Exactly what is left of value in this company; except some
| payrolls, offices, and some contracts which are void anyway?
| ptero wrote:
| Pipelines (which I would not underestimate) and storage?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Great pipelines; only problem is that they go to Russia ...
| ptero wrote:
| That is a disadvantage, but pipelines are very valuable.
| For example, Russia would love to sell gas to China,
| which would love to buy it, but pipelines take a heck of
| a long time to build. And regional, lower volume
| pipelines can be a nightmare to build.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| the storage and the pipes are the most valuable thing,
| since gas is just a commodity.
|
| Add another supplier, load it up, use pre-existing storage
| and distribution, Gazprom replaced.
|
| This is also why this is so dangerous from a legal
| perspective. Gazprom probably spent a great deal building
| this network and storage. Only to have it seized....
| pfortuny wrote:
| the stored gas and the storage facilities, I gather.
| ls15 wrote:
| To me it seems that actually the reason for the seizure was
| that Gazprom did not store enough gas, while they have the
| biggest capacity:
|
| > In Germany, a third of gas storage belongs to Russia's
| Gazprom (GAZP.MM), whose facilities in Germany had lower
| levels of stored gas this winter than those operated by
| other companies.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-approves-
| law...
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| It's a hostage for a future prisoner exchange.
| gumby wrote:
| A plausible scenario but probably won't happen in this
| case, Could be more like overseas subsidiaries of Bayer,
| seized by various allied countries in WWI and only reunited
| in 1994.
|
| The reparations bill (both during and after the war) will
| be high and I assume various assets, including foreign
| currency reserves, will end up going to fund the
| reconstruction of Ukraine.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Despite germany's strong dislike for east europeans I am glad to
| see they are taking measures to help their allies. This is a
| positive move in the right direction, I hope we figure a way to
| help germany solve it's dependency of russia in due time, as
| indeed their economy needs protection.
| dotancohen wrote:
| And what of the rest of the Western world's dependency on
| Middle Eastern oil? That was already weaponized in 1973 yet
| nobody seems to have learned from it.
| recuter wrote:
| Let them drink Pepsi.
| belorn wrote:
| Why is protecting the economy more important than stopping the
| funding of the Russian army and their military invasion?
| zirror wrote:
| Even if we stop paying for gas and oil right now, that won't
| stop the Russian invasion. They have massive currency
| reserves, are relatively self sufficient etc.
|
| Whereas if we do not receive gas anymore, it would wreck our
| own economies, which would lead to massive unemployment,
| social unrest and maybe going to the political extremes in
| the long run.
|
| It would basically be European suicide. We need to be strong
| to help Ukraine.
|
| That being said, the day we can stop paying for Russian gas
| is the day we will truly be free. Germany's liberatarian
| finance minster called renewables "freedom energy" and that
| could not be truer IMO.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| There's a false assumption that stopping oil and gas imports
| will somehow stop the invasion and funding of Russian army.
| It will not, so it's better to focus on more practical and
| sustainable steps.
| belorn wrote:
| During the war with IS there were constantly talk about how
| funding terrorism goes directly into funding the wars, be
| that people who directly gave them money or people who
| bought their drugs. I also often see the police say things
| like "don't buy things from criminals, it directly fund
| more criminal activities". We have international agreements
| against blood diamonds and conflict resource, all focusing
| on eliminating the finance of those conducing wars. It
| seems that in every possible way where people are funding
| war and conflict, the message has been in the past 20-50
| years that this is actually a problem that need to
| addressed. While cutting the funding doesn't imminently
| stop conflicts, or prevent terrorists from making home made
| bombs, giving them money does prolong conflicts and gives
| the warring faction more options to continue doing horrible
| acts of violence. Cutting the money flow also provide
| pressure on the targeted population to stop their leaders
| and forcing them to the peace table.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| This is just a theory that does not take into account the
| circumstances of the Russian invasion. In the long term,
| it does make sense to stop importing oil and gas from
| Russia to prevent the future aggression, because it will
| indeed weaken the regime. In the short term, if EU stops
| buying oil and gas immediately, Russia still has: 1)
| possibility to export to China and other non-aligned
| markets (many countries which abstained in UN vote, are
| the client states which will not support the embargo). 2)
| enough resources to continue funding military procurement
| for many months 3) semi-autonomous economy that will
| survive even total trade embargo with the West, albeit on
| a lower technology level
|
| The effects of oil and gas embargo will be felt by
| Russian population earliest by the end of summer,
| effectively being a punishment rather than a deterrent.
| We should aim to end the war long before that and stop
| talking about this and other populist but unrealistic
| ideas like no-fly zone.
| belorn wrote:
| I am not convinced. It still mean people will have blood
| on their hands when they knowingly are providing the
| funds for a war. It is a very dangerous bet to hope that
| the Russians won't have enough time to use the money,
| that peace will arrive before that funds reaches the
| military operations. People should aim to end the war
| before this summer, but what if it doesn't happen? That
| gas, oil and coal are means for missiles and hired
| mercenaries. How happy should German citizen be if
| journalists later traces the money from a fossil fuel
| transaction to weapons used in a war crime where citizens
| were tortured and killed?
|
| In the short term we are seeing employees at European
| harbors and other places being put to the moral dilemma
| of either refusing to work or continuing working with
| Russian transports, knowing that they are working
| directly with the economic side of the Russian military
| branch. Many do not want to have to look in the mirror in
| a few months, knowing what they did, knowing what they
| knew, feeling like they have blood on their hands. Saving
| jobs and saving the economy is a poor comfort when on the
| news they see ordinary citizens laying on the street with
| a bullet in the head.
|
| Every nation hope that wars will end in just a few days,
| weeks or months. Blitzkrieg. It will be over by the
| weekend. The Russian thought so when they entered Ukraine
| and they were wrong. It a nice aim to hope that the war
| will be long gone before the summer, but realistic there
| is a high risk that it won't. The assumption when funding
| war should be that the war isn't going to end.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >That gas, oil and coal are means for missiles and hired
| mercenaries.
|
| Russia is not a banana republic where you could possibly
| find the direct link between the export revenues and
| military expenses. This is not how Russian economy works,
| the picture is much more complicated.
|
| First of all, the revenue from oil and gas sales is
| collected in foreign currency. Russian budget receives
| the money in taxes paid by exporters, but these money
| must be converted first to rouble. The conversion rate
| can be regulated by the central bank through purchases
| and sales of the currency and they of course can print
| money when necessary. This means that this currency
| actually never reaches the recipients of the budget money
| and exchange rate can be adjusted to serve the needs of
| the economy.
|
| Second, Russia produces nearly all of its military
| equipment and pays for it in rouble. There's almost no
| mercenaries in this conflict, it is mostly regular army,
| which also receives their salaries in rouble. They have
| very low exposure to external economic shocks and if
| necessary can switch to the war economy mode at the cost
| of the rest of Russian population.
|
| Now, what happens if Russia stops exporting oil and gas
| to Europe? Just in the last year Russia collected 50%
| more money than it planned in the annual budget. The
| extra money are usually deposited in the Reserve Fund and
| National Wealth Fund and re-invested, but they can be
| used in crisis times. Basically, just in the last year
| Russia collected enough money to survive 6 months of oil
| and gas trade embargo (and this is 150% of its military
| budget). Let's say, some of these money are frozen on
| European and American bank accounts and cannot actually
| be used except for servicing the debt. Still plenty of
| these savings are still accessible. Besides that, Russian
| central bank can still print money to fund the war. This
| may result in even higher inflation, but the economic
| bloc of Russian government is extremely competent and can
| mitigate the impact on the population.
|
| Ordinary Russian people will inevitably notice the
| economic downturn, but their mentality is the mentality
| of survival and mobilization, plus the state propaganda
| can justify the means very convincingly and repressive
| apparatus can silence those who disagree. We are talking
| about many years of attrition until the economic
| situation becomes untolerable. No sanctions in the world
| will force Russian people to overthrow the government in
| the next year or two, just like they did not work for
| North Korea, Venezuela or Iran.
| belorn wrote:
| > Russian budget receives the money in taxes paid by
| exporters
|
| That is incorrect. The oil and gas companies is owned by
| a few oligarchies with direct ties to Putin and the
| Russian government. Based on what secret service and
| other agencies has leaked, there isn't a major difference
| between what is the Russian government, what is
| controlled by Putin, and what is owned by the owners of
| the oligarchies. To a degree they operate just like a
| banana republic in this aspect, although a better
| comparison is likely state owned Chinese companies that
| get funded, instructed, operated by government personal,
| given benefits by their secret service, and with party
| representatives being directly involved in the leader
| structure and ownership.
|
| And it may indeed take years before the sanctions
| actually hurt enough for the Russian government to start
| move to the peace table. American war in Afghanistan took
| 20 years. Iraq started in 2003 and ended in fully in
| 2021. Their war in Pakistan took 14 years. Yemen is still
| ongoing, same in Somalia, and Syria.
|
| 6 months would be comparable short, and it is not out of
| the question that it may take many years. The more funds
| they get the easier they have in continuing operations.
| And while Russia produces nearly all of its military
| equipment, just like the US does, both require a lot of
| imports to actually do the production. Military equipment
| require a lot of electronics, much which isn't produced
| in Russia. Machines, vehicles, technology and tools all
| depend on international supply chains, and the more
| isolated the nation is the harder and more money they
| need to spend on maintaining those critical imports. All
| while the nations population suffer from the economic
| downturn. At some point reserves gets low and that is
| when peace is best pursuit.
| [deleted]
| zirror wrote:
| German here: We don't dislike eastern europeans at all, at
| least not on any society wide level. Of course, there are
| exceptions. We do dislike backslides into authoritarianism in
| governance, like in Hungary (who's Victor Orban declared
| 'illiberal democracy' [1]).
|
| 1: https://verfassungsblog.de/illiberal-democracy-beyond-
| hungar...
| yrgulation wrote:
| Romanian ethnic here. There is no place in germany I can walk
| safely without feeling that if they hear me speak romanian I
| won't be verbally abused or looked down upon. Naturally there
| are exceptions, and there are many romanians in germany, but
| all of those I spoke with told me that at some point in time
| they have been racially profiled or outright abused. Their
| skill ranges from medical PhD, scientists, software
| developers, or workers, so status is not a factor.
| Furthermore there have been cases where hotels and resorts
| were asked to report all romanians to the police because
| apparently some dudes did some petty crime previous years and
| as such they had to "keep and eye on all" - and all was
| according to the german law. In Romania any time the
| government tries to raise the minimum wage, the german
| chamber of commerce tries to block it. All the while
| american, or british companies, have no issue paying a very
| decent salary - up to point where tech pay is rather high.
| Again, all those I spoke with told me that german and
| austrian companies outright insulted them with their pay
| offer because "romania is cheap". Again, there are exceptions
| to all this - see liverail, a partnership between german and
| romanian business people that was sold for 500mil to
| facebook. There are success stories, but much more horrible
| stories.
|
| It goes well beyond politics, as you can see.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > germany's strong dislike for east europeans
|
| I'm from as Eastern Europe as it gets (European side of
| Istanbul) and people seem to like me here. Why do you think
| that they dislike East Europeans?
|
| I mean, Germans don't seem to like the current government of
| the country where I'm from, but for good reasons and I
| certainly share their dislike!
| neuronic wrote:
| > Despite germany's strong dislike for east europeans
|
| It's news to me that we strongly dislike Eastern Europeans?!
|
| Some folks definitely do, especially in logistics or people who
| live close to the border, mostly due to economic frustration
| regarding lost jobs and some amount of crime coming from
| Eastern Europe but Germany as a whole doesn't dislike Eastern
| Europe...
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I hope I one day get to visit a Russian nationalized McDonalds;
| just to fully grasp what deglobalization means ...
| sdfgdf wrote:
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > just to fully grasp what deglobalization means
|
| Deglobalization means you can't travel to Russia ;)
| trasz wrote:
| Sure you can, it's just limited - like with North Korea.
| amelius wrote:
| I hope they get rid of the clown.
| cushychicken wrote:
| And that terrifying living purple beanbag creature.
| noworld wrote:
| France?
| cushychicken wrote:
| Grimace.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| Putin?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Not sure "they" refers to "McDonald's" or whether it refers
| to some country and the "clown" leading the government.
|
| In case it refers to McDonald's: They already did.
| https://www.mashed.com/202684/the-real-reason-mcdonalds-
| got-...
| [deleted]
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| It has been nationalized since 2014 in places like Crimea.
|
| (Not sure if Americans can visit the place. There are downsides
| to deglobalization too...)
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| Currently it's probably the same stuff as the original
| McDonalds. Eventually the quality will deteriorate due to lack
| of supervision - unless Russians will do an equal job in
| supervising, which I doubt.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| They could send spies into the American McDonalds ...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Eventually the quality will deteriorate_
|
| What quality? Even in Austria, at some really busy McD's I've
| been to like the train station or airport, their finished
| burgers looked nothing like the ones in the menu.
|
| Often they had components like the cheese, lettuce and sauces
| missing and I got just a dry paddy between two barren pieces
| of bread as a burger lol. It was uneatable so I had to throw
| it away and buy a sandwich from the SPAR next door which has
| much better quality.
|
| The McD's I've had in NY weren't much better either.
|
| OTOH, McCafe's in Europe (the separate establishment, not to
| be confused with the coffee you can get from McD's) are
| amazing, coffee is always great, on par with even fancy
| hipster cafes and their pastry and cakes aren't bad either.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > looked nothing like the ones in the pictures
|
| This is surely too high a standard!
|
| Did Coke ever give you the satisfaction of the people in
| the Christmas adverts?
|
| Did you get girls after you bought Lynx?
|
| Did you score more goals with those Predators?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Sure, not looking exactly like the menu/ads is one thing,
| that's just marketing for you, but being served a patty
| in a bare bread bun, missing the cheese, lettuce and
| other parts of the product you ordered, is an outright
| scam in legal terms if we're being pedantic.
|
| Sure, I get it, having underpaid and overworked people
| making your food is not a recipe for a great experience,
| but ultimately I paid in full, the company got their
| money and I didn't get the product I ordered, which is
| why I jusy stopped eating there, since I don't like being
| _" THAT GUY"_ who ask for "the manager" in order to
| complain about overworked people on minimum wage that
| they got his order wrong and they need to redo the order
| while 10 more customers are waiting in line.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I've had a lot of fast food burgers in the US but never
| have I had a bare patty in a bun, unless I specifically
| asked for it a time or two as a child.
| Karunamon wrote:
| What likely happened in this case is they gave GP a
| burger intended for someone who ordered it 'plain'. The
| slips McDonalds uses to attach special order tags to the
| sandwich wrappers are prone to falling off or being
| overlooked.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| N'ah, the employees were just overworked so made mistakes
| or cut corners. The amount of customers that come at an
| airport or a train station at rush hour is insane.
| Mistakes happen, or some employees cut corners to save
| time, knowing that the customers won't have time to
| notice the mistake and complain about it, since they have
| a train/flight to catch.
| idleproc wrote:
| Lynx kept the defenders away so I scored more goals, and
| the Predators made me look like Beckham...
| PinguTS wrote:
| This depends on how much has been sourced locally before and
| how much has been sourced from the US.
|
| Like buns and meat and so could be sourced locally. But spice
| (mixtures) may have been imported and the mixture recipe is
| locally unknown.
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| It can't be that hard to reverse engineer a spice mixture
| in 2022.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| It is not even necessary, since local tastes are
| different and you need to adapt the recipe.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| As we're not talking about small cuts of leaves but some
| highly industrialized component it is not so easy as
| counting leaves and mixing them together. You can
| certainly analyse the flavors, but that won't tell you
| much on the production process for creating this with all
| the artificial components.
|
| However that could creates some creativity in place and
| create similar, but different (better? Worse? Who knows)
| products.
|
| Compare this to Coca Cola in Germany during WW2. Due to
| the embargos they couldn't deliver the "secret syrup" so
| Coca Cola Germany used some "fantasy" and created (the
| predecessor of) Fanta, which nowadays is a brand of Coca
| Cola served in multiple countries (with differeing
| recipes)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Why would you even want to copy Coca-Cola's "super secret
| syrup" when we already have in Europe several local Cola
| drinks that are better, and sometimes even healthier?
|
| Fanta is now nothing special either, just a sugary fizzy
| drink with orange flavoring that can be done better by
| other local companies.
|
| Coca Cola is just a branding and marketing juggernaut at
| this point, but their drinks themselves are easily
| replaceable by better local alternatives at any time.
|
| Come to think of it, banning Coca-Cola could actually be
| a health benefit for the population lol.
|
| I remember that in Mexico there are poor villages
| addicted to Coca-Cola where the company uses local water
| to make the drinks and the villagers have no access to
| clean tap water and have obesity and diabetes from all
| the coke they drink, and all is sponsored buy the Coca-
| Cola and their lobbying. Absolutely disgusting.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That's orthogonal to the discussion. Fact is that local
| branches can survive with some form of pivot if their
| owner can deliver a core component for the product.
| [deleted]
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| So we don't have the technology to analyze chemical
| components of things? I still find that hard to believe.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| You can analyze components, but that doesn't give you a
| process to recreate in scale. Many aromas and stuff are
| remainders of some Enzym processing things or some
| chemical reaction where the initial ingredient is
| dissolved.
|
| I myself spend some time in bread and a part of the taste
| of bread comes from my bacteria/yeast culture growing
| here at my place, feeding of stuff which is in the air at
| my place. If i go elsewhere that already changes to a
| small degree. If I vary temperature, humidity of air ...
| this has impact. On industrial scale the impacts are way
| more as they use processes to ensure the end product
| stays as much the same as possible independently from
| changes to ingredients (natural products change with each
| harvest ...) and where it is processed further (a Big Mac
| is, by McD, supposed to be as equal lgibally as possible)
| this is done by having Enzyms, chemicals and other
| comments doing their work.
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| Yes I agree living things like bacteria/yeast cultures
| are hard to get right. In regards to your previous
| example you can get the blend of leaves right, but if the
| plants aren't genetically identical or even aren't grown
| in the exact same climate the end product may taste very
| different. When it comes to completely artificial
| flavorings though it would seem to me that it would be
| much simpler. For example isoamyl acetate is isoamyl
| acetate regardless of where or how it is produced.
| mhermher wrote:
| Why do you doubt it?
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Russians are actually good at building restaurant business.
| It is one of the most competitive and difficult businesses
| there, so only the smartest survive. I'd rather go to
| Starbucks or McDonalds in Moscow than anywhere else in Europe
| (I'd prefer though a local chain). One of the fastfood chains
| even applied kaizen in their operations including kitchen.
|
| The biggest problem will be the quality of supplies, as
| sanctions will damage the supply chain.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I hear the Polonium McFlurries are to die for, but the
| machine is usually broken.
| marbu wrote:
| But I guess that one aspect of this deglobalization trend is
| that you won't be able to travel there in the first place until
| the trend changes.
| durnygbur wrote:
| So they finally can fire Schroder... oh he is in Rosneft already
| what a bummer.
| fnma wrote:
| ibmfud wrote:
| Did you forget one coalition partner?
| sokols wrote:
| The sending of troops to Kosovo was done in accordance with
| UNSCR 1244.
| rgmarker wrote:
| naoqj wrote:
| sokols wrote:
| Russia voted for the resolution as well.
| naoqj wrote:
| Ah well, if Russia says it then it's justified.
| nairboon wrote:
| And sending of troops is unconstitutional according to Art.
| 26 of the German constitution...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Is there some memory loss at work here? Because when Russia
| marched straight into Crimea and started this war eight years
| ago I distinctly remember Merkel being in office. We even
| rewarded Putin with NS II for it.
| actinium226 wrote:
| I'm just wondering, what specific escalation policies are you
| talking about?
| MrRiddle wrote:
| Pushing NATO expansion in Ukraine and arming them with hi-
| tech weaponry.
| actinium226 wrote:
| What did Biden/Scholz do on this front? I did see earlier
| that Merkel had opposed Ukraine in NATO, but I'm not
| familiar with Scholz's policy on it, or Biden's.
| ericmay wrote:
| Ukraine wasn't armed with hi-tech weaponry until Russia
| started invading in 2014 and then continued being a bad
| actor which culminated in January/February 2022 delivery of
| said weapons at the last second.
|
| NATO expansion is a convenient excuse but fails for two
| reasons:
|
| 1. Baltics are closer to Moscow than Ukraine and right on
| the border.
|
| 2. It is widely acknowledged that the primary driver for
| Putin is not NATO expansion but actually historical
| "reasons" he has drummed up. His "histories" are titled
| things like "On the Historical Unity of Russians and
| Ukrainians", not "On the Historical Animosity of Russia and
| NATO" for a reason.
| ithkuil wrote:
| this!
|
| Yeah, this argument about the NATO threat is repeated ad
| nauseam because it superficially sounds like a reasonable
| justification: "they just had to defend themselves".
|
| But even if that was true, Otto von Bismarck said it
| well: "Preventive war is like committing suicide out of
| fear of death".
|
| Imagine an alternate universe where Ukraine joins EU and
| NATO and now russia faces a NATO "wall" on the west. In
| this alternate universe where Russia didn't initiate an
| aggression, the public opinion of most european countries
| is not particularly interested in military spending.
|
| Compare that with this universe; the city I live in in
| Italy is going to build a new military base and while
| some people will certainly complain, the backlash won't
| come close to a pre-war scenario. Now even the population
| feel it that the rules have changed.
|
| Effectively Putin has armed Europe to their teeth. What a
| perfect 4D chess move to protect Russian safety.
|
| And seriously, I yet have to understand what is the
| threat that "NATO" would pose to Russia. What should they
| be worried about? Are they afraid that one morning NATO
| will invade Russia? What for? This part of the scenario
| is so embarrassingly hand-wavy, seemingly imbued only of
| reverberance of a distant past.
|
| Or is it that Russia be afraid of Western values
| infecting Russia? In that case, what difference does it
| make how many neighbouring countries are NATO members?
| You can just decide to make your laws and your policies
| and live your life according to your chosen lifestyle (if
| your citizens so wish)
|
| Or is it perhaps that Russia used to be a super power and
| now it isn't anymore. The greatness past now must live
| again. Let's reclaim our destiny and all this bullshit.
| This not how civilised nations should be run. This is
| barbaric and should stop and sadly the only reason
| humanity has to put up with it is the nuclear arsenal.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > Imagine an alternate universe where Ukraine joins EU
| and NATO and now russia faces a NATO "wall" on the west.
|
| if nato were at russian border then russia would in some
| ways be china's ukraine. possibly something they
| preferred to avoid
| danaris wrote:
| > Are they afraid that one morning NATO will invade
| Russia?
|
| From everything I've heard thus far, Putin is afraid that
| NATO will prevent him from reconstituting the USSR under
| him.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Well USSR is as dead as russian soldier somewhere in
| muddy Ukraine. There were good reasons why it broke down,
| and those reasons are still present. Its plain simple -
| nobody sane, moral and free wants to be in pact with
| russia. Who remains are dictators, bullies and murderers.
|
| Thank god Trump didn't succeed in effectively disbanding
| Nato. Imagine what Europe would look like now if that
| happened (as Bolton mentioned in cca 2018).
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > Thank god Trump didn't succeed in effectively
| disbanding Nato. Imagine what Europe would look like now
| if that happened (as Bolton mentioned in cca 2018).
|
| This take bothers me, it's a sound bite repeated at
| nauseam with no backing what so ever. As a Romanian, I
| kept a close watch on US politics in Eastern Europe.
| Nothing that Trump did was pointing to disbanding NATO,
| on the contrary, he increased the US presence in Eastern
| Europe and was tougher on Putin than Obama was. Why do
| you think Russia-haters Poland began to like the US so
| much under Trump?
|
| https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/01/12/poland-the-only-
| europ...
|
| I feel like this is like a propaganda take: he forced
| countries to increase NATO spending, but somehow he
| wanted to weaken NATO?
|
| He wanted Germany and Europe off of Russian gas, even
| blocking Nord Stream2 (upsetting the Germans), but
| somehow he was working for Putin? Btw, Biden unblocked
| NS2 in his first week in office, for no good reason.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5MJEMHZZsI
| ericmay wrote:
| Truth is somewhere around here, I'm not sure where
| exactly:
|
| "Senior administration officials told The New York Times
| that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump
| privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North
| Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former
| officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr.
| Trump could return to his threat as allied military
| spending continued to lag behind the goals the president
| had set.
|
| In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last
| summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national
| security officials that he did not see the point of the
| military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the
| United States"
|
| I'd say ultimately whether this was some sort of good-
| natured negotiating tactic with European allies or not,
| Trump lost enough credibility that his motives are/were
| seriously concerning and questionable. This didn't come
| from nowhere.
|
| > He wanted Germany and Europe off of Russian gas
|
| Maybe but again I think the motives are questionable. Did
| he want this because he spent years antagonizing Europe
| and decided that it made sense for oil and natural gas
| companies who donated to his campaign to get in on the
| fun by selling American gas to Europe, or because he had
| a genuine concern for geopolitical interests and saw how
| Putin was acting? I'm sure you can understand that many
| don't really trust Trump or his motivations to do
| _anything_. For example, was he advocating for getting
| Germany and Europe off of Russian gas and on to American
| gas, or did he also advocate for nuclear power and
| renewables (both, not just one of those)?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-
| presiden...
| flavius29663 wrote:
| That "tumultuous meeting last summer" was the one from
| which I shared the youtube video?
|
| That's how it got to the press: Trump is against NATO.
| When you watch the video you see it's more about the US
| is being upset that they pay for Europe's security while
| Germany pumps billions into Russia's gas every year.
|
| He was right. And btw, he was not the first US president
| to try this (and they all failed).
|
| But to base the whole "Trump wanted out of NATO" on some
| leaks from unnamed aids, while all his actions and
| policies were opposed to that, it just shows you want to
| hate Trump no matter what.
|
| He was in power for 4 years, he didn't do 1 step to
| remove US from NATO, he made NATO stronger. He deployed
| more troops and bases in Eastern Europe, and conducted
| more exercises than ever before.
| ericmay wrote:
| Which _we_ know, but apparently Putin doesn 't. I think
| in one of his writings or a public speaking engagement he
| said "They're (Ukrainians) Russian even if they don't
| know it".
| danaris wrote:
| I read an article recently--which I'm afraid I can't find
| anymore--that posited that part of what's going on is
| that Putin, and _some_ of the rest of Russia, has a
| rather surprisingly expansive view of what it means to be
| "Russian", combined with the belief that if one is, by
| that definition, Russian, it is good and right to be part
| of Mother Russia.
|
| It also pointed out that by extension, this means that
| anyone in Ukraine who _does not_ believe that they are
| Russian (and thus does not want to be part of Russia) is
| either effectively insane, or some kind of seditious
| traitor (I don 't remember the exact way that logic went
| in the article at this point).
|
| I don't know to what extent what it described is true (my
| guess is "somewhat, but not necessarily absolutely"), but
| it does seem to help explain some of what's going on.
| ericmay wrote:
| I agree and this is what I've read and listened to as
| well. (1) Putin tell us this is the case in his spoken
| words and in his written words and actions.
|
| From an economic standpoint, or the standpoint that war
| is bad and should be avoided this obviously looks insane
| to you and I. But if you have different motivations, such
| as you and others described, it could look perfectly
| rational. It's all about the parameter space you operate
| in that determines your actions.
|
| (1) Ezra Klein has some _fantastic_ podcast episodes
| about this - let me know if you 'd like a suggestion or
| two
| chrisco255 wrote:
| From a purely geographical perspective, Ukraine is far
| more strategically important than the Baltics, due to its
| access to key rivers that flow into Belarus and Russia
| and due to its Black Sea coastline. I am sure if the U.S.
| tried to place missile systems in the Baltics it would
| trigger a Cuban missile-crisis like situation.
| rgmarker wrote:
| 1. The Baltics joined NATO when Russia was still in
| disarray and aren't as important strategically. Russia
| tried to join NATO itself after that but was rebuffed.
|
| 2. This was primarily for domestic consumption and the
| West picked it up in February/March together with the
| notion that Putin had gone mad. Hardly anyone talks about
| either of these theories any longer.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Russia tried to join NATO itself after that but was
| rebuffed.
|
| Yes but it's not that simple. First, do you trust Russia
| in NATO? Given the nefarious things Russia has done over
| the last 30 years, you can't trust this on the face of
| it. It would be a very Russian thing to do. By accounts
| that I've read (open to other readings here) Russia
| wanted to join in a privileged position as well, versus
| as "just another country" and wanted to be fast-tracked
| and so forth.
|
| > The Baltics joined NATO when Russia was still in
| disarray and aren't as important strategically.
|
| I don't find any sympathy with the disarray argument.
| That just says "these countries joined NATO when Russia
| couldn't do anything about it". Your point about
| strategic importance, though, is well taken. Ukraine _is_
| strategically important for many reasons. Some /one of
| which is that it can undermine Russia's stranglehold on
| European gas imports.
|
| > This was primarily for domestic consumption and the
| West picked it up in February/March together with the
| notion that Putin had gone mad. Hardly anyone talks about
| either of these theories any longer.
|
| Agreed. I think the simple case is simply that Putin
| believe(s)(d) that he had enough negotiating power
| against NATO countries to be able to stop them from
| inflicting serious damage on Russia after invading
| Ukraine, and also that because Ukraine (in Putin's words)
| isn't a state, the fiction would simply collapse once
| Russia arrived. We don't do a great job and assume that
| _our_ incentives are the same as someone else 's. In this
| case Putin couldn't give a crap less about dead people
| and economic destruction. He cares about The Historical
| Unity of Russians and Ukraine. Perhaps at a much higher
| cost than we are willing to endure.
| [deleted]
| martimarkov wrote:
| I think you forget that Ukraine has the right of agency and
| has the right to choose to join a defensive union. I'm also
| finding it hard to get any concrete examples of offensive
| actions by NATO. So far every single one seems to be okay
| with Russia (given they didn't veto it in the UN security
| council).
| rgmarker wrote:
| Suppose the following reversed situation:
|
| - There is still a Warsaw Pact.
|
| - An Orange Revolution happens in Canada in 2014, backed
| by KGB neocon equivalents of Nuland/Graham.
|
| - A Russia friendly regime is installed in Canada in
| 2014.
|
| - Canada has regions with large U.S. populations.
|
| - Canada keeps pushing for Warsaw Pact membership.
|
| - At a security conference in Munich in 2022, Canada's
| Russia friendly prime minister mentions that he could
| acquire nuclear weapons.
|
| Would you say that the U.S. would likely invade according
| to the Monroe doctrine? Or would you say that Canada has
| the right of agency?
|
| None of this is excusing Russia, but disregarding these
| issues leads to escalation. I'm astonished that the NATO
| hardliners apparently think that their policies have been
| a success (they are of course a success if the goal was a
| proxy war that tests the strength of Russia's military in
| the first place).
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You over-simplify things quite a bit. Just because people
| in given country want freedom and not have as rulers
| constant puppets of russia doesn't mean they became US
| lapdogs. Its russia's fault that they globally represent
| oppression, corruption, incompetence, war crimes and now
| even genocide of their closest neighbors. Nobody normal
| would want to align with that voluntarily, only other
| bullies and murderers (which is exactly whats happening
| if you look at ie UN voting re Ukraine).
|
| Don't forget that Ukraine during ruling of all those
| russian puppets became country so desperately poor that
| even such a place like russia was rich by comparison. I
| don't find it strange at all that people just wanted to
| get rid of this constant negative drag on their very
| existence.
| mopsi wrote:
| Why do these analogies always leave out the part where
| the US commits genocide time and time again against
| Canada so that Canada sees such pacts as the only way to
| survive against renewed US calls for genocide in Canada?
| depr wrote:
| These kinds of comments are a waste of time, some people
| are simply only capable of seeing their side as the good
| guys, and/or everything that happens as mono-causal.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| In this analogy the US also agreed to protect Canada's
| security for denuclearization, which they would have done
| (I.e. defanged threat).
|
| Russia ignoring the Budapest memorandum will be the most
| damning long term consequence since it teaches everyone
| that you will be attacked if you denuclearize.
| ericmay wrote:
| And what about Crimea and previous Russian aggression against
| Ukraine in 2014 when Merkel was in power?
|
| Calling this a "left" thing is really asinine when that's just
| who happens to be in power at the time. Do I get to blame
| terrorism, record debt, and COVID-19 on the U.S. and European
| "right"?
|
| I'm constantly surprised at the lack of critical reasoning
| skills when it comes to government or world events. Otherwise
| intelligent people just absolutely turn off their brain when it
| comes to this stuff.
|
| You are probably correct that the war would not have happened.
| Merkel's Germany would have stood by and refused even more
| adamantly the right of Ukraine to exist as a sovereign country.
| Likely it would just be part of Russia now with no war at all.
| In fact, that's what Russia counted on while Putin has for
| _years_ cozied up to Germany and convinced them to
| strategically rely on Russia to supply them with natural gas,
| so then they could hang a sword over the head of Germany while
| they start snapping up the territory and lives of other people.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| This doesn't make sense to me. Can i get an explanation?
|
| The German state seized a local German branch of the Russian
| Gazprom company. In order to secure its energy supplies... which
| come from Russia.
|
| Are they in essence capturing some reserves?
| kkfx wrote:
| Gazprom formally cease it's activity in Germany, and it's
| German branch operate North Stream gas terminals. "seized" is a
| bad term to say "the State substitute the local management to
| ensure terminals operations to been able to buy the gas they
| need.
|
| If you really look for "sanctions" you'll see that there are
| some, but not really touching the energy sector since there is
| so far no viable alternative.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That company owned pipelines and storage tanks within Germany,
| thus controls the flow of gas after reaching Germany.
| nbadg wrote:
| To expand on this: much of the distribution infrastructure
| within Germany is owned by Gazprom. For example, there's a
| very large natural gas storage capacity within Germany, but a
| significant portion of that is owned by, you guessed it,
| Gazprom. There's broad consensus that, if all of the storage
| infrastructure were topped up, Germany would be able to make
| it through _next_ winter reasonably well, even if Russia
| stopped delivering gas. However, currently the storage
| capacity is at around 30%, which is insufficient. This move
| would imply that the German government is taking action to
| force the distribution infrastructure to be more resilient
| against the contingency that Russia (through one means or
| another) stops delivering gas.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that there's been some evidence
| suggesting that, in the weeks and months leading up to the
| Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the "fill level" of the
| Russian-owned storage infrastructure within Germany was
| decreased, which would both be a way for Russia to attempt to
| leverage gas delivery against sanctions (in other words,
| blackmail), as well as _yet another_ strong indication that
| the invasion was a deliberate Russian aggression planned well
| in advance.
|
| If you're interested in more and understand German, I'd
| recommend the most recent episode of Lage der Nation, which
| talks about this at much more length:
| https://lagedernation.org/podcast/ldn284-ukraine-
| krieg-6-woc...
| sabertoothed wrote:
| Fellow German here, that is a very good summary. It's
| sometimes hard to convey the complexity of the situation to
| foreigners.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > _yet another_ strong indication that the invasion was a
| deliberate Russian aggression planned well in advance.
|
| Are there people out there who have doubts about this?
| Regardless of any opinions on the rationale behind it, it's
| very clearly something that was planned in advance. I
| didn't think that was something that was up for debate.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I dont know whether they believe it but I'm fairly sure
| I've seen people on HN claim that something or other that
| President Biden did a day or two before the invasion
| forced Russia to act.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I could be persuaded that something like that could have
| changed Putin's timing a bit, but the invasion was
| happening regardless.
| emteycz wrote:
| How could you not plan an invasion in advance? This is
| easily at least a year of planning just on the entirely
| practical side of things like how to get enough units and
| hardware there.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's also worth pointing out that there's been some
| evidence suggesting that, in the weeks and months leading
| up to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the "fill level"
| of the Russian-owned storage infrastructure within Germany
| was decreased, which would both be a way for Russia to
| attempt to leverage gas delivery against sanctions (in
| other words, blackmail), as well as yet another strong
| indication that the invasion was a deliberate Russian
| aggression planned well in advance.
|
| It's a bit more complex than that. Following the
| liberalization of the gas market, "discount providers"
| appeared who simply bought on the spot market because that
| is usually drastically cheaper than long-term contracts,
| and also the large utilities shifted parts of their
| purchase to spot market contracts for the same reason. For
| many years this worked just fine from an outside POV, and
| the margins on the retail gas price that the utilities made
| were usually large enough to account for short-term supply
| price hikes without having to raise new capital or retail
| prices. All seemed to be well.
|
| Last year, people noticed that Gazprom's storage facilities
| were unusually low. Gazprom of course denied any
| wrongdoing, they claimed they are fulfilling their
| contractual obligations and that's it. Which is objectively
| true and as a result, no regulatory agency had any legal
| authority to step in.
|
| And now, with the invasion ongoing (and for a few months
| prior), Gazprom still kept their long-term contracts but
| unlike all the prior times did not supply much on the spot
| market - which led to the well observed price hikes and
| utilities going bankrupt or out of business because their
| "old" strategy of simply buying on the spot market didn't
| work out.
|
| The responsibility for the current situation rests to a
| large part on the utilities who forewent resilience (in
| form of more expensive long running contracts) in favor of
| short term profits. We dug our own and the Ukrainian's
| graves at the same time.
| fuoqi wrote:
| >Gazprom still kept their long-term contracts but unlike
| all the prior times did not supply much on the spot
| market - which led to the well observed price hikes and
| utilities going bankrupt or out of business because their
| "old" strategy of simply buying on the spot market didn't
| work out.
|
| What do you expect to happen when long-term contracts get
| tied to spot prices? Why the hell would Gazprom willingly
| lower the spot prices when bulk of its sales will suffer
| from it?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why the hell would Gazprom willingly lower the spot
| prices when bulk of its sales will suffer from it?
|
| Because that is what they have done for the last decades
| - the pipelines have _more than enough_ capacity, even
| without NS2. They only stopped selling on the short-term
| market last year.
|
| The only explanation why Gazprom was leaving that obscene
| mountain of money on the table is because they have been
| ordered to do so by Vladolf himself, so that he has
| leverage against Germany in the Ukraine invasion.
| nbadg wrote:
| The nuances around spot pricing are testing the limits of
| my knowledge here, but my understanding (which might be
| wrong!) is that, in the context of gas storage
| infrastructure, spot prices have an indirect influence on
| the fill level, purely based on price speculation. In
| other words, the good-faith actors would respond to low
| spot prices by increasing the fill level in storage
| infrastructure, but because the prices are currently
| high, there's no incentive for that, and now the German
| government is trying to figure out a policy solution to
| increase storage fill level. Seizing control of Gazprom
| Germania would then play a part in that policy solution.
|
| That being said, just to clarify: the discussions I was
| referencing in the GP comment suggest that Gazprom has
| not been acting as a good-faith rational actor, and has
| in fact been keeping their storage infrastructure even
| less full than you would expect due to high gas prices.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > That being said, just to clarify: the discussions I was
| referencing in the GP comment suggest that Gazprom has
| not been acting as a good-faith rational actor, and has
| in fact been keeping their storage infrastructure even
| less full than you would expect due to high gas prices.
|
| Yes, I merely explained how they were able to deflect the
| accusations of acting in bad faith for so long.
|
| Gazprom was leaving literal billions of dollars on the
| table by not offering any meaningful spot contracts for
| months now, until the invasion began - a fact that no one
| could explain with anything else but war preparations,
| and war was seen as a ridiculous idea almost everywhere,
| so public discussion was simply left at "we have no idea
| what they are doing in Moscow".
| ls15 wrote:
| From another article:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-approves-law...
|
| > In Germany, a third of gas storage belongs to Russia's
| Gazprom (GAZP.MM), whose facilities in Germany had lower levels
| of stored gas this winter than those operated by other
| companies.
|
| In my opinion, Gazprom did so (last year) in order to
| strategically weaken Germany's position and strenghten Russia's
| position, by reducing the amount of gas that is stored in
| Germany.
| dathinab wrote:
| > Are they in essence capturing some reserves?
|
| No,
|
| sized here means "put under control of a trustee until the
| situation is resolved" it doesn't mean "take over ownership".
|
| The reason that happens is because the persons(s) currently in
| control of Gazprom Germania did try to use that control to act
| against German law in a way which threatens national security.
|
| This is also more about Gas infrastructure then Gas as far as I
| can tell.
|
| My guess is that some Russian oligarch tried to move ownership
| to one (or potentially many) chains of "dummy" companies which
| obfuscate the actual owner and go through many other non-
| Russian nationalities. This e.g. would make many legal actions
| against Gazprom Germania harder as the new (dumy) "owner(s)"
| would not be from Russia or any other sanctioned state.
| kmlx wrote:
| > would make many legal actions against Gazprom Germania
| harder
|
| what legal action? Gazprom is not under any sanctions...
| ce4 wrote:
| Apparently the company was sold or ownership restructured in
| march without prior notification of the regulatory body. The
| new owner is Gazprom Export LLC, of which ownership is unclear
| - it is suspected that Gazprom tries/tried to evade regulatory
| control over critical german infrastructure, thats why Minister
| Habeck has transferred control over to the Bundesnetzagentur as
| a trustee.
|
| Edit: Source (paywalled, german)
| https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/gazprom-germania-hat-berei...
| baq wrote:
| there's been talk of gazprom being a safe haven for higher
| placed people running from russia's recently tightened regime.
| think officials and/or FSB agents, etc. wanting to avoid
| sanctions by changing ownership structure of gazprom to western
| shell companies.
| beberlei wrote:
| Gazprom attenpted to change owners and default the company. In
| that case the gas contracts would have been void including its
| negotiated prices (under currebt market value) and the currency
| in euro instead of rubbels.
| diskapital wrote:
| > Gazprom attenpted to change owners and default the company.
|
| Is that illegal?
|
| I wonder about rule of law. We talk about this as sacrosanct
| here in the "West".
|
| It is funny that when push comes to shove (in my perception
| at least), we're quick to break the rules to get the outcome
| we want.
|
| When say a 3rd world country does something like this in
| response to a "Western" multinational's actions (perhaps a
| controversial example would be Mossadegh nationalizing APOC),
| then the response we take it is pretty severe (often
| involving significant amounts of violence) and we portray
| ourselves as being "morally" rightous, often with the very
| same "rule of law" claim.
|
| Just something I like to think about in this scenario. Not
| trying to push any agenda.
| dathinab wrote:
| > Is that illegal?
|
| Under some circumstances if your company operates essential
| infrastructure, yes. (And always had been, btw.)
| rfrey wrote:
| You ask a question, then immediately assume the answer and
| draw conclusions based on that answer. I dispute that this
| is just something you like to think about ("Just asking
| questions here...") or that you are not pushing an agenda.
| diskapital wrote:
| I beg forgiveness if my question and thoughts on the
| matter are somehow perceived as an agenda. I haven't
| studied the Gazprom case carefully, but after all, the
| title of OP's article is "Germany has seized control of
| Gazprom", not Germany has lawfully taken over management
| of Gazprom assets after a protracted court case
| establishing ownership and takeover processes, so am I
| really at fault for drawing conclusions based on that?
| spyder wrote:
| _" Is that illegal?"_
|
| "The German economy ministry said Gazprom Germania violated
| foreign trade law."
|
| "Germany's economy ministry justified the takeover by
| saying it had not granted permission for the Gazprom
| Germania acquisition. Permission is required, the ministry
| said, if the investors are not from the European Union and
| "critical infrastructure" is involved."
| diskapital wrote:
| > "The German economy ministry said Gazprom Germania
| violated foreign trade law."
|
| And that's sufficient basis for a legal system to
| reassign ownership of assets?
|
| Just for debate, lets say Google search is critical
| infrastructure and Google unilaterally took some action
| that upset the German economy ministry, would the legal
| system enable German authorities to take over assets that
| Google had within Germany and/or areas still under German
| control?
| kergonath wrote:
| Broadly speaking, countries are sovereign and can do
| almost anything they'd like in this context. It is most
| of the time limited by treaties and trade agreements, so
| I suppose Russia could make a stink and complain with
| things like the WTO.
|
| You'd have to dig into the specifics of German law in
| this case, but this is really unsurprising. Sales are
| routinely blocked and companies nationalised (with
| compensation, in civilised countries, though the fraud
| aspect could change this in this instance).
|
| Gazprom Germania can believe the government is wrong and
| take it to the courts, but the legal argument seems
| sound.
| ectopod wrote:
| There are additional rules for critical national
| infrastructure. The gas company didn't follow them and this
| gave the government the legal right to seize the business.
| zekrioca wrote:
| Honest question: Then why did they (Germany) allow
| Gazprom to own critical infra. in the first place?
| chasd00 wrote:
| This is probably one of those circumstances where law
| gets so complicated that you are always in violation of
| something. That way, when the authority needs you in one
| way or the other the haul you in front of a judge for
| your "violation of the law" unless you cooperate with
| their demands.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Honest answer: Because they were following the rules up
| until that point.
| riidom wrote:
| That's correct, it depends a lot on the perspective. We
| justify this because it's critical infrastructure, which is
| a good enough reason to me, but if a 3rd world country
| would argue with critical infrastructure, the narrative in
| western countries would be very different (assuming it
| would lead to some conflict of interests - otherwise, sure
| fine!).
|
| We definitely need to get rid of our double standards. All
| complaints about this from non-western countries are mostly
| correct.
| gumby wrote:
| Well, Germany is at (economic) war with Russia so the
| "rules" are different.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| There is a huge difference between the rule of law in
| proper democracies ("Rechtsstaaten") and arbitrary
| political decisions in totalitarian states (such as
| Russia).
|
| German ministers can implement some draconian decisions,
| but they are operating in a large system of checks and
| balances, including independent courts and required
| parliamentary support for passing legislation.
|
| The two scenarios are therefore roughly as similar as the
| arbitrary power of the owner of a privately held firm and
| the constrained power of a CEO of a publicly traded
| company.
| diskapital wrote:
| > There is a huge difference between the rule of law in
| proper democracies ("Rechtsstaaten") and arbitrary
| political decisions in totalitarian states (such as
| Russia).
|
| I'm tempted to agree. However, I did raise a specific
| counter-example. In that case, a "proper democracy"
| (Mossadegh was democratically elected and presumably used
| entirely legal means to nationalize APOC assets), and
| then the long arms (CIA, MI6) of another set of "proper
| democracies?" undertook a violent coup to take back the
| assets. I'm not aware of how/whether those "long arms"
| interacted with the large system of checks and balances
| that you mentioned.
| kergonath wrote:
| I don't know where you are in "the West" but here (Western
| Europe), selling a company is often subject to some kind of
| oversight, particularly something as critical as energy or
| with large companies. And artificial bankruptcies to evade
| contracts are actually fraud.
|
| Not making any point about your example, which was indeed
| despicable behaviour.
| gumby wrote:
| > > Gazprom attenpted to change owners and default the
| company.
|
| > Is that illegal? I wonder about rule of law. We talk
| about this as sacrosanct here in the "West".
|
| Ignoring the geopolitical aspects and the "critical
| infrastructure" aspects: yes it's illegal everywhere to
| unilaterally abrogate a contract or to use bankruptcy or
| such rules to evade contract.
|
| Normally of course this would be handled through the
| courts, but the answer to your question is "yes"
| nieksand wrote:
| Here is the German explanation of what happened:
|
| https://www-sueddeutsche-de.translate.goog/wirtschaft/erdgas...
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| I read a great reader comment on the topic (also in German so
| try DeepL) https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9cb54d35
|
| Its a political push and pull about who defaults on the
| existing contracts on gas import, seeing as Russia wants to be
| payed in ruble now, while Germany would prefer the payments to
| be stuck on a EU bank account as a form of reparation payments
| to the Ukraine. To prevent this outcome, Russia in effect might
| be liquidating the Gazprom Germania. With Gazprom Germania
| being the ones doing the actual importing. Over the last
| weekend there was a change in ownership of the Gazprom Germania
| to new unknown owners. So they might be already bankrupt. To
| prevent this, Germany is now seizing control of Gazprom
| Germania and might be on the hook to prevent an insolvency to
| not default on the contracts with Russia.
|
| In short, the German government fucked up majorly.
|
| edit: Check "throwhow"s post in this thread for a longer
| summary
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| That comment is way to emotional to give it more than a few
| minutes of thought. It mixes facts with an unnecessary
| reaching commentary.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| Facts and opinion are rather easy to distinguish though.
| Its the shortest description i could find of the structure
| and mechanism in play. If there is a problem with that
| part, pls do share.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I completely agree with a part of the comment that DE gov't
| probably didn't consider a long war or a long bad relation
| with RU. If they did, there wouldn't have been blocking
| Spain's proposal to supply EU with Algerian and Moroccan gas.
| And they would have been looking into incentivizing solar,
| geothermal, etc. with immediate effect. Since German heavy
| industry is very dependent on Russian gas, if it's not
| coming, it's almost guaranteed a global economic meltdown
| much like 2008. Since it's not coming from banks liquidity
| this time, we are unprepared for it.
| screenbreakout wrote:
| I don't know where to add this question without it seeming
| off subject, but seeing as we're heading into spring,
| seeing Germany has quite a wealthy economy and QOL, that
| many if not most workers get 5 weeks of holiday, the chip
| shortage is leading to slowdowns in the automotive industry
| etc... why doesn't the government just go cold turkey, give
| people a month or 2 free holidays while drastically
| reducing public lighting, telling businesses to stop
| heating their premises at night etc etc... I mean we had a
| dress rehearsal 2 years ago with the onset of Covid, this
| would be better ,for a good cause, probably give a boost to
| domestic spending and send a f...U to the rest of the world
| saying we too can think outside of the box :-)
| foepys wrote:
| The author of this blog is Fefe who is known for his strong
| pro-Russian bias.
|
| He told the world up until February 23rd that everybody was
| dumb to believe that Russia would invade. I would not believe
| anything Fefe says on his blog, ever. He dips into conspiracy
| theories time and time again and when he gets proven wrong he
| just says that it was meant to be "media competency
| training".
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| Its a readers comment. But either way, you not liking the
| author doesnt mean the summary of the situation is untrue.
|
| In case somebody can refute the explanation (or give a
| better one) of the Gazprom structure and motivation, i
| would be happy to hear the problem with it. As i see it,
| despite the rambling its a short and concise explanation of
| who does what why.
| mkoryak wrote:
| I am curious, why is this being downvoted?
| gumby wrote:
| Because ultimately it makes a strong assertion that the
| German government fucked up without supporting it.
|
| There's nothing wrong with saying the government fucked up
| (though I don't think it did). But the non sequitur opinion
| doesn't add to the discussion.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| Its the summary of the commentary. I dont think you can
| justify not mentioning that bias.
| sonicggg wrote:
| How many years has Merkel remained in power? This awkward
| situation is all her doing, but still nobody will mention her
| name. How can one country willingly put its entire energy sector
| in the hands of a terrorist state, which has been showing signs
| since 1999 when bombing its own citizens.
| unmole wrote:
| The Soviet Union was a reliable energy supplier to (West)
| Germany even at the height of the Cold War. _Ostpolitik_ was
| the dominant mode of thinking across party lines. The West has
| never had any qualms about buying oil and gas from the worst
| regimes in the world. This outrage over buying from Russia
| while turning a blind eye to Arab monarchies seems rather
| perfomative.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _outrage over buying from Russia while turning a blind eye
| to Arab monarchies seems rather perfomative_
|
| The Arab monarchies largely keep their messes in their own
| backyards. When there has been leakage, it has been limited.
| Russia rolling tanks into Europe is so harebrained it creates
| a new category of security risk we haven't had close to home
| in a while: that of a madman.
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| >The Arab monarchies largely keep their messes in their own
| backyards. When there has been leakage, it has been
| limited.
|
| 9/11
| unmole wrote:
| > creates a new category of security risk we haven't had
| close to home in a while
|
| And Europe is reacting to it appropriately.
|
| My point was that it's ultimately about geopolitics, not
| the feigned morality the GP was alluding to.
| rswail wrote:
| I wouldn't call 9/11 "limited". Nor is Yemen, or, earlier,
| Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran etc.
|
| The fundamental of all of these is oil and now, gas.
| Removing the demand for these will remove the necessity of
| engaging with these propped up monarchies and autocracies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _wouldn 't call 9/11 "limited"_
|
| Relative to what's going on in Ukraine, it is. 9/11 was a
| massive terrorist attack. Next to the scale of state-on-
| state warfare (a category it does not belong in), it was
| a rounding error.
|
| Agree that de-carbonising our economy will remove our
| need to support these regimes.
| cout wrote:
| What do you mean by "performative"?
| unmole wrote:
| I mean the " _How can you buy oil and gas from a murderous
| dictator?! He bombs innocent people!_ " style virtue
| signalling.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yeah, it is surreal to see many of the predictions from the US
| state department and the DOD come true. As an American who
| lived in Germany, I wish the Germans would have been correct,
| but I am happy to see our institutions have a few smart people
| remaining... sigh
| nebukadnet wrote:
| Lots of reasons. It was at the time the least authoritarian
| regime. The alternatives are Saudi-Arabia, where as I
| understand the gas is harvested with the help of human rights
| violations, and other nearby suppliers like Norway were already
| and still are at capacity.
|
| At the same time, gas is a relatively enviromentally safe, when
| compared to others, and since the relations to Russia were
| mostly friendly, the slight problems in the regime were
| ignored.
|
| Now germany is reliant on them, and that was a mistake they are
| realizing. But if germany stops accepting gas today, the
| germans will freeze in the winter when the gas runs out, so its
| a complicated situation.
| scapecast wrote:
| The issue is not people freezing. Wear a sweater and suck it
| up. Buy an electric heater. There are ways to hack your way
| through it.
|
| The much larger problem is industrial manufacturing, in
| clusters like Ludwigshafen, where you have companies like
| BASF and Benckiser that rely on Russian gas for their
| refinery operations.
|
| Fertilizers, chemicals, lubricants, etc.
|
| You turn off Russian gas, you turn off the German industrial
| complex. Literally over night.
|
| And that's the reason why the German is so cagey about
| stopping the import of Russian gas. They can't, because they
| don't have an alternative.
| twa999 wrote:
| > Germany has seized control of a local unit of Russian natural-
| gas giant Gazprom, saying it will do 'what is necessary' to
| maintain energy supply in the country
|
| this action doesn't make much sense then, does it?
| throwhow wrote:
| Some theory...
|
| GAZPROM mother sells gas to the Russian GAZPROM EXPORT OOO (the
| Russian version of a GmbH) in Petersburg. This sells the gas to
| GAZPROM Germania in Berlin. This in turn sells the gas to a
| large number of smaller subsidiaries with their various
| customers. So far, this strong division has served to minimize
| risks and taxes.
|
| Customers pay the gas to the subsidiaries of GAZPROM Germania
| in EUR/USD. These are the much-cited "supply contracts".
| GAZPROM Germania aggregates these payments and transfers them
| via Luxembourg (GAZPROM Bank) to the Russian GAZPROM EXPORT.
|
| Therefore, only GAZPROM Germania (for Germany) is affected by
| the conversion of payments to GAZPROM EXPORT from EUR/USD to
| rubles. After all, end consumers in Germany do not buy from
| GAZPROM AG in SPB or from GAZPROM EXPORT in SPB, but from the
| subsidiaries of GAZPROM Germania. The new legal situation in
| the RF will not change anything for these end users with their
| EUR/USD contracts.
|
| Instead of transferring the EUR/USD to Luxembourg, where these
| funds can be "frozen" at any time, GAZPROM Germania is now
| transferring the aggregated payments from its subsidiaries to
| Moscow, where they are forcibly converted and effectively
| revalue the ruble. To a certain extent, these funds are thus
| withdrawn from the EU's options for sanctions. And Habeck and
| Co. can (almost) do nothing about it.
|
| But the west doesn't want that. The idea of the western values
| is that GAZPROM Germania receives payments from the
| subsidiaries, but cannot pass these funds on. At the given
| moment GAZPROM Germania can then be confiscated as part of a
| further level of sanctions together with its considerable
| account balances. The RF would then have supplied gas without
| receiving any payment. The moral justification for such an
| expropriation would then be "reparations to Ukraine". The USA
| in particular has experience in this. Private German companies
| were selectively expropriated after 1918 in order to "pay" for
| war damage by the German Reich.
|
| What is the counter-strategy of the RF?
|
| GAZPROM (mother) instructs GAZPROM EXPORT to liquidate GAZPROM
| Germania. This eliminates the commercially necessary
| intermediate step for gas trading, the trading chain is
| interrupted and the supply comes to a standstill. Not because
| someone turned off the tap, but because the importer is
| "bankrupt". However, since this would be a quasi-hostile act by
| the RF (specifically planned insolvency of a strategic utility
| company), they do it more skilfully: GAZPROM Germania is sold.
| To shady offshore companies whose owners nobody knows and whose
| cash flows are as yet unknown. And these offshore companies
| first withdraw the capital from Luxembourg, leaving behind a
| GAZPROM Germania as an empty shell, which is then sent into
| insolvency.
|
| Habeck wants to forestall this scenario. The BMWi places
| GAZPROM Germania under receivership in order to prevent GAZPROM
| Germania's assets from flowing out to the new owners. And to
| prevent GAZPROM Germania from transferring the capital
| collected from the subsidiaries to Moscow for compulsory
| exchange.
|
| Only GAZPROM EXPORT could now stop selling to GAZPROM Germania
| if GAZPROM Germany does not pay in rubles.
|
| The only question now is how quick the "new owners" were over
| the weekend. Because GAZPROM Germania was supposedly sold on
| April 1, 2022. So now, four days later, it is unclear whether
| GAZPROM Germania is already insolvent. If so, then Habeck and
| Co. would have a problem. On the one hand, they would have to
| save the company with significant financial contributions, if
| necessary, and on the other hand, they would then have the buck
| in their hands. Because if you now instruct the management of
| GAZPROM Germania not to bill in RUB, as requested by GAZPROM
| EXPORT, then you are breaking the contracts, not RF. After all,
| GAZPROM Germania and GAZPROM EXPORT can specify any currency
| for internal settlement, and these are in rubles for GAZPROM
| EXPORT by law.
| chinathrow wrote:
| You could also link to the original source (in German):
|
| https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9cb54d35
| Loic wrote:
| Second to last paragraph (not copy/pasted in the parent
| comment) shows that the person who wrote this note knows
| about this stuff. I have customers scrambling right now
| because if this _really_ big problem.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Right, because people can withdraw capital like in a bad
| action movie and then it is just gone - nothing a state could
| ever do!
| LordHeini wrote:
| It made sense, but it might be too late now.
|
| The structure is rather complicated:
|
| Afaik it works (or used to) this way:
|
| There is Gaszprom (the Mother), Gazprom Export, Gazprom
| Germania and a bunch of distributors.
|
| Gazprom sells to Gazprom Export which sells to Gazprom Germania
| which sells to its distributors.
|
| This helps to evade taxes and allows for a bunch of nice
| management jobs to be distributed to German/Russian
| politicians.
|
| The distributors pay the gas in Euro to Gazprom Germania which
| collects the money and sends it via Belgium to Gazprom Export.
|
| With the Sanctions this would mean that that Gazprom Export
| could convert Euro to Rubles, so the Money in Belgium has been
| frozen.
|
| To circumvent this Gazprom sold (or tried to) Gazprom Germania
| to some offshore entities out of the sanctions reach.
|
| To hinder Gazprom to do this the German goverment tried to
| seize control but it might be already too late and they ended
| up with an empty shell.
| hvidgaard wrote:
| Did you even read the article?
|
| > Germany's economy minister announced the seizure in a
| statement on Monday. The move came after the ministry of
| economic affairs learned that Gazprom Germania had been
| acquired by JSC Palmary and Gazprom export business services
| LLC -- but it wasn't clear who the owners behind the two
| companies were, per the statement.
|
| > Germany's economy ministry justified the takeover by saying
| it had not granted permission for the Gazprom Germania
| acquisition. Permission is required, the ministry said, if the
| investors are not from the European Union and "critical
| infrastructure" is involved.
| twa999 wrote:
| so the russians are going to be happy about this move then?
| AndrewThrowaway wrote:
| Are we still trying not to offend Russians?
| hvidgaard wrote:
| The Russians knew of this rule, so I doubt they are
| surprised. If the new owners are approved they will get
| control back.
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its
| mouth.
| bitL wrote:
| Maybe they will burn the offices to convert them to electricity
| once the gas stops flowing?
| silon42 wrote:
| back to coal gas?
| skeptikal wrote:
| This is Germany doing something to not be seen doing anything.
| Doing something for lack of a plan is usually a mistake.
|
| Everything of value of this subsidiary has (pipelines, stored
| gas, etc), is physically in Germany and already subject to German
| law. The stored gas wasn't going anywhere without the German
| regulator's permission and the regulator can always force Gazprom
| Germania to sell German stored gas to Germans.
|
| Nor does seizing this magically solve the problem of lack of gas.
| The Germans either abide by Russian rules for gas, or pipelines
| coming in from Russia remain empty.
|
| This was a boneheaded move. The Russians can now seize a
| comparable German asset in Russia to recompense Gazprom; say a VW
| plant, a real asset that can continue to produce real things
| while the Germans are left with old laptops, empty pipes, a salt
| cavern and unheated offices in Berlin.
| agapon wrote:
| Well, Gazprom changed ownership of Gazprom Germania without any
| approval from German government. So, apparently, it's not
| impossible that they would be able to do other things as well.
| skeptikal wrote:
| changing company structure while the assets remain in Germany
| (in fact they are immobile) is peanuts. Pretend change.
|
| If they (the Russians) had tried to vent Germany's gas
| reserves (which wont happen because the employees are German)
| to kneecap them (the Germans), then you would have seen the
| German regulator do something.
| Barrera wrote:
| > Russian gas accounted for 55% of Germany's gas imports in 2021
| and 40% of its gas imports in the first quarter of 2022, Reuters
| reported. The country has pledged to end the use of Russian gas
| by 2024, the Habeck said in a March 25 press release.
|
| Some in this thread have asked how Germany could be so foolish to
| tie its economic destiny to such a problematic country as Russia.
|
| The answer seems to be "one step at a time." And Germany is not
| unique.
|
| Take the United States, for example, and its near total
| dependency on Chinese manufacturing for, well, just about
| everything. The US offshored manufacturing capacity hand-over-
| fist. In exchange the US got cheap goods (and low inflation), and
| continued supremacy of the dollar in world trade and as a reserve
| asset.
|
| Both of those benefits are looking shakier by the week. Inflation
| is ripping higher, and the sanctions on Russia have prompted what
| some observers are calling Bretton Woods III, or a brand new
| economic order that minimizes the position of the US dollar.
|
| But the worst part of all is the enormous leverage China has over
| the US. The US can protest human rights violations or even an
| attack on Taiwan, but any serious action taken against China will
| visit upon the US the same fate as Germany now faces. The brave
| threats can not be made good on because of an economic hole dug
| over the course of a generation or two.
|
| The irony is that if you wind the clock back 25 years or so, this
| situation is the same in direction (although possibly not in
| magnitude) as policy makers wanted. Free trade was supposed to
| make conflicts more difficult because of mutual dependency. And
| it has worked. Just look at the disconnect between the saber-
| rattling German/US rhetoric and the tepid German/US actions.
| lorenzfx wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is the right answer.
|
| The prevailing political view, was that strong economic ties
| would make war and violent conflict between Germany and Russia
| impossible. This is basically what happened intentionally and
| successfully between Germany and France after World War II
| first with European Coal and Steel Community and later the
| European Union.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Let's be fair: this was a massive, strategic aim of the Russian
| state. Germany didn't randomly fall into this situation, there
| has been decades of influence, bribery, and espionage in
| Germany to develop that dependency. Kids may need to be
| reminded that Germany has only been reunified for 32 years and
| Berlin was divided from the USSR controlled East Germany by a
| physical wall. Russia is is so motivated to expand its borders
| that they are invading Ukraine.
|
| It can be really tempting to look at this as bad for the US,
| but this is really just catastrophic for Russia. Decades of
| investment blown up, with one of the only real non-kinetic
| weapons that they have.
| cameldrv wrote:
| I see a lot of poo-poohing of the influence aspect of this.
| The biggest example is the man at the top, Gerhard Schroder,
| the former Chancellor of Germany.
|
| As Chancellor, he began the phaseout of nuclear energy and
| approved the Nord Stream gas pipeline directly from Russia to
| Germany.
|
| Today he's:
|
| 1. The Chairman of Nord Stream, the company that owns the
| pipeline
|
| 2. The Chairman of Rosneft, the third largest company in
| Russia
|
| 3. A member of the board of directors of Gazprom, the largest
| company in Russia
|
| You figure it out.
| blub wrote:
| When you put it like that, one almost has to feel sorry for
| Germany, bravely fighting influence, bribery and espionage
| every step of the way only to fall prey in the end to the
| Russian state which maliciously supplied the German industry
| with gas.
|
| But this is not at all bad for the US, it's great! Russia is
| isolated and weakened and the EU is strangulated by yet
| another wave of refugees and weakened economically, becoming
| even more dependent on the US for security.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I think that https://ceres.georgetown.edu/research/student-
| projects/geopo... is a fair assessment. I would add https:/
| /www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany,
| also. It is plainly clear that the current Russian
| leadership is expansionist in nature, because they are
| killing thousands of people in a former satellite state to
| reestablish prior borders.
|
| This is definitely a less than zero-sum environment. Russia
| would have been better off not invading Ukraine, along with
| Europe and the US. A peaceful and international law abiding
| Russia would be a stronger and richer Russia.
| [deleted]
| holoduke wrote:
| The US doesn't want to have a strong Europe Russia
| relationship. That's the whole reason behind this
| conflict. The US started to bribe everyone in Ukraine and
| even forced a coup in 2014. History of the US
| destabilising regions is very evident. They are good at
| it.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| That is a way of looking at it without nuance. Russia
| falsified the elections in the East in 2004 and tried to
| murder Yushchenko. They created a problem in western
| Ukraine by themselves, which precipitated the revolution
| in 2014. Since Russia is profoundly gifted at
| domestically blaming the west for their own problems, I
| can see how it would seem like the US forced a coup.
|
| Perhaps Russia shouldn't invade their neighbors. It seems
| to make their neighbors not like them.
| mhermher wrote:
| There is no need for influence, bribery, or espionage. It was
| simply the cheapest, most reliable source of energy. Russian
| gas "won" on the market. Regardless of what route Germany
| takes from here, it's almost certain they'll be paying more
| in energy costs.
| petre wrote:
| Yes, if you rule out nuclear, than Russian gas was maybe
| the cheapest. Energiewende fail. They are so addicted to it
| that they even wanted to brand natural gas as a non
| greenhouse energy source. This was a central point of
| German decarbonization prior to the Russian invasion of
| Ukraine. And the culprits are mainly the OPEC lobby and the
| Greens. With 70% electricity generated from nuclear, France
| does not have this problem. It's one of the things that de
| Gaulle got right. The others were _vive la republique_ and
| fight the enemy at all costs instead of making concessions
| and armistices.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > It was simply the cheapest, most reliable source of
| energy.
|
| What about the nuclear reactors that DE chose to shut down
| for Russian natural gas?
| type0 wrote:
| You can thank huge Russia funded "green" movement for
| that
| panick21_ wrote:
| German were incredibly anti-nuclear long before. Blaming
| this on Russia is nonsense.
| jsnodlin wrote:
| thriftwy wrote:
| > Kids may need to be reminded that Berlin was divided from
| the USSR controlled East Germany by a physical wall
|
| They should also definitely remember what they did to cause
| this.
| nautilius wrote:
| What _did_ the East Germans do that their fellows in the
| U.S. /British/French occupied zones did not do?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Their own 80286 clone?
| nautilius wrote:
| I think that was a bit later, but fair point ;-)
| pphysch wrote:
| Suppose everyone was simple and conspiracies didn't exist.
| Where might Germany get its fossil fuels? Perhaps shipped
| across the entire Atlantic Ocean? Perhaps from Mars? Or
| perhaps from the major producer on its same continent?
|
| The bottom line is that European integration is a natural
| phenomenon. It is natural to have strong economic ties within
| one's neighborhood. You don't need a decades long conspiracy
| to explain basic economic advantage.
|
| However, European/Eurasian integration is an existential
| problem for the one superpower that isn't part of Eurasia.
| Therefore we get a lot of chaos, misinformation, and
| artificial divisions.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Where might Germany get its fossil fuels?
|
| How about nuclear?
|
| https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-face-of-the-
| anti-n...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464
| blub wrote:
| Gas is used firstly for heating, then in the chemical
| industry in Germany.
| someguydave wrote:
| heating with electric powered heat pumps would be way
| more efficient
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Germany does need energy, and I actually give German
| leadership the benefit of the doubt, that they sincerely
| believed rapproachment with Russia was possible and Nord
| Stream 2 was a good faith endeavor. Sadly Russia ruined
| that impression, it required no work on the part of the
| United States to do so.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Sadly Russia ruined that impression, it required no
| work on the part of the United States to do so.
|
| The State Department would strongly disagree with you.
| Victoria Nuland recently gloated that they have spent
| over $5,000,000,000 supporting anti-Russian movements in
| Ukraine in the post-Soviet era.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| And, impressively, all that money didn't work to stop the
| project until Russia started the Ukraine offensive in
| February.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > In exchange the US got cheap goods (and low inflation)...
| Inflation is ripping higher
|
| Part of the reason inflation is ripping higher (and this was
| beginning to happen even pre-pandemic) was because the previous
| administration began tradewars which began to rip up global
| supply chains. Yes, the bulk of our inflation currently is due
| to the pandemic, but a good chunk of it was going to start
| happening anyway even if the pandemic never happened because we
| began to disrupt global wage arbitrage. Bringing jobs back to
| America was always going to lead to a period of inflation.
| baybal2 wrote:
| lobochrome wrote:
| Now consider that Germany has a huge dependency not only on the
| supply side to China but also on the demand side for machinery
| equipment and vehicles. In addition, we have a huge dependency
| on the US for national security.
|
| So we are dependent on Russia for Energy, on China for
| Manufacturing and industrial demand of our most important
| industrial sectors and are protected by the US from a National
| Security point of view.
|
| The army is a national laughing stock, the car industry is
| begging to be disrupted, and chinese equipment and machinery
| companies have completed their IP theft programs and are now
| almost at par from an innovation level.
|
| All while international media hailed Merkel and her useful
| idiots for their international leadership.
| paganel wrote:
| The problem with a country like Germany is that it's too big
| for Europe (as a continent), but too "small" for the world.
| Similar thing for France. Of course that the European Union
| was meant as a solution for this problem (and for the
| accompanying wars caused by it). I'd say that while the EU
| has been a great project from an economic pov from a
| political and geo-strategic pov this war in Ukraine is
| showing its huge weaknesses.
|
| Imo only the US, China and partially Russia (and maybe India)
| can be really autarchic, all of these countries that span
| almost an entire continent (or a big part of it).
|
| Not sure if there's a solution to all of this, from Europe's
| point of view. Ideally by this point we should have had a
| genuine political and societal union (I'm from Romania
| myself, another EU member), but that has failed, it is
| failing (of course that the powers that be refuse to
| acknowledge that). Without that genuine political and
| societal union one cannot have an autarchic Europe.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Upvoting but Russia most definitely _cannot_ be self-
| sufficient. Unless you mean in a theoretical or future
| sense. Most of it exports are energy, and their industry
| depends heavily on western and chinese machinery and
| components.
| holoduke wrote:
| Enough smart people to create a small world within.
| imtringued wrote:
| No, it's more logical to send all the smart people to
| Germany, let them work there and then sell your resources
| to Germany. You can then buy high quality products from
| Germany and thereby be completely independent from a
| properly functioning domestic economy.
| [deleted]
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| India is far too fractured and chaotic to really bat at the
| same level as the US or China.
|
| They will (probably)get there, but they're not at the big
| leagues just yet.
|
| Russia was thought to maybe be at that level, but the war
| is showing how hollow their military is, and maybe how
| wobbly their economy is.
| LeanderK wrote:
| The current form of the EU is a stop-gap as long as not
| more power is transferred to the EU level. The EU is
| plagued by constant infighting and incoherent policies of
| the member states. But I think it's going better than some
| realise and a lot of the current projects of the EU are
| really firsts (a real industrial strategy with a focus on
| more autonomy in areas like chips and batteries). People
| except a lot from the EU and don't realise that in reality
| the legal bounds haven't really progressed since the 90s.
|
| This conflict can again strengthen the european
| institutions and maybe result in some more reforms for the
| EU (and hopefully some democratic advances, although
| unlikely considering orban etc.).
| cycomanic wrote:
| That's a weird argument, you will essentially not find one
| country in the world that is autark from others. If they are
| building stuff they depend on raw products from other
| countries and other countries to buy their things. If they
| consume things they are dependent on others again. I mean
| even if you're the centre of semiconductor manufacturing in
| the world like Taiwan, you still depend on others to build
| your machinary (pretty much all the EUV systems are build by
| Asml a Dutch Company)
| mort96 wrote:
| Wait what's the contradiction here? Merkel's and Germany's
| international leadership can be good at the same time as
| Germany's dependency on Russia and China is problematic from
| a national security perspective. Those two aren't mutually
| exclusive.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Maybe. I guess you can celebrate her for her "international
| leadership" (what are we exactly celebrating by the way?)
| and at the same time acknowledge that she completely missed
| the interests of her constituency.
| randomopining wrote:
| Yeah I don't see how she made any strategic decisions
| that set up the long term success for Germany and EU.
| She's remembered bigly internationally for letting all
| the migrants in.
| timeon wrote:
| Bordering countries like Italy and Greece were becoming
| overwhelmed by migration wave. They were crying for help
| for quite some time til anyone even noticed the problem.
| So to ease the pressure there was plan to redistribute
| them in to EU. This was refused by several countries so
| 'Merkel' took some of them to Germany. It was not ideal
| but better then nothing.
|
| That crisis was caused by instability in Middle East.
| Which was caused by several other factors like climate
| (farms without water in Syria) and international politics
| of Russia and USA. But like now everyone was blaming
| Germany.
| petre wrote:
| She should have thrown money and equipment at the problem
| like the US does. That works most of the time. When it
| doesn't, let French diplomacy handle it. Or even better,
| just do both at the same time. Italy and Greece, just
| take this money and patrol ships and do coastal patrol.
| Hungary, just take this money and build a barbed wire
| fence, if you think it works. Border states were guarding
| the Schengen Area dreamland. Instead they paid Turkey
| tribute to allow it to blackmail and took the migrants
| in, assingned quotas which made everyone unhappy about
| it.
| mort96 wrote:
| I mean, "international leadership" are your words. I
| don't know what Merkel personally has done (or what her
| "useful idiots" have personally done, or even who those
| "useful idiots" are). But you _are_ positing that there
| 's a contradiction between Germany's dependency on China
| and Russia, and Merkel's perceived achievements in
| international leadership. I'm just saying that there's no
| contradiction or hypocrisy in being in an influential
| international leadership role, while being from a country
| with its own national security issues.
|
| Essentially, I'm saying that the last part of your
| argument falls under the "vaguely gesturing at imagined
| hypocrisy" category.
| jonhohle wrote:
| During the previous six years, it struck me as completely
| bizarre that there was any pushback for bringing manufacturing
| or energy production back locally. It doesn't have to be
| nationalist, it's just adding redundancy in case your trading
| partner realizes they have over powered leverage. No business
| wants to concede to a vendor that they are irreplaceable.
|
| Edit: Likewise, watching Germany dismantle its nuclear
| infrastructure over the last several decades for... what reason
| exactly? Replacing a clean, cheap, on-demand energy source for
| dependence on foreign energy imports? Even if you think global
| trade is panacea, why throw out working critical infrastructure
| and replace it with something beyond control?
| tawaypol wrote:
| It's tempting to think that the governments of these states
| have been infiltrated by their enemies.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Hanlon's razor applies here I think. Don't attribute to
| "the enemy" what can be adequately explained by
| incompetence.
| mnadkvlb wrote:
| Maybe. but existance of leaders like Gerhard Schroder
| displays a different story.
|
| (he is sitting on russian gas companies' boards, after
| heavily going against nuclear). No shit the leaders
| failed the country for their own gains, seems like.
| barrenko wrote:
| The incompetent and the corrupt and more often than not
| the same person.
| lallysingh wrote:
| They don't know what the right answer is, but they know
| the answer that gets them paid.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Be careful. Incompetence is an almost infinite sink for
| blame, and it's easy to misattributed to it what really
| belongs somewhere else.
| anamax wrote:
| Incompetence doesn't have a bias. Malice does.
|
| More to the point, Hanlon's Razor is usually an excuse to
| do nothing, which is a mistake.
|
| It's better to assume that people intend the likely
| outcome of their actions. If they want to claim
| stupidity/incompetence as a defene, that's on them.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Energy politics in the public discourse was often dominated
| by environmental concerns, and there wasn't a singular focus
| on CO2 as we have now.
|
| Gas has been a popular choice, because it is a lot cleaner
| than coal / light oil / wood from a local pollution
| perspective. It burns cleanly, so switching to gas heating
| significantly reduces pollution in cities.
|
| Nuclear energy is NOT clean, because it has the huge unsolved
| problem of what to do with the radioactive waste. Nobody
| wants radioactive waste anywhere near them, and there just
| isn't any place where you can put radioactive waste where it
| will be safe for a few hundred years.
|
| But the biggest reason for our fear of nuclear energy is
| Chernobyl. It's been 37 years, and Chernobyl is still a
| danger.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Well it's hard to accept German stupidity as the official
| narrative but there it is. Fear of radiation Uber Alles.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| And Chernobyl killed magnitude s less people in total than
| the number that dies directly or indirectly due to fossil
| furl emissions.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Nuclear fuel is recyclable. The safe place to put it is
| back in a reactor. There are political reasons that doesn't
| happen, but not technical reasons.
|
| Globally, nuclear has lower deaths per kWh than even wind,
| and significantly lower than natural gas or oil. From a US
| centric perspective, nuclear energy is by far the safest by
| an order of magnitude[0]. Even a catastrophe like Chernobyl
| resulted in the deaths of fewer people than a single year
| of oil and gas drilling.
|
| 0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natu
| ral-g...
| siscia wrote:
| Adding redundancies is bad from an economic view centered in
| the next few months.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's difficult to keep those local industries going when
| international competition can undercut them and WTO
| membership hampers your ability to compensate for this.
| Joining the WTO (and several other lesser-known
| organizations) is simply giving away part of your sovereignty
| and ability to react to domestic needs in favor of access to
| cheap goods and services.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The OP's comment is not grounded in reality.
|
| The U.S. used Chinese factories because they _were_ cheap.
| Emphasis on "were." Companies have been switching away from
| China en masse (to India, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.) for at least
| the past decade because China is no longer the cheap option.
| Frequently, including shipping costs (even before COVID) it was
| cheaper to just get stuff made in America if you could find a
| supplier. Hell, my last 3 years at a firm were devoted almost
| entirely to helping companies restructure their international
| operations _out_ of China to cheaper countries.
|
| The U.S. won't take serious action against China because China
| took Russia's place as the global counterweight to the U.S. But
| it has absolutely nothing to do with China's so-called economic
| leverage, because China doesn't have any over the U.S. anymore.
| scns wrote:
| > Some in this thread have asked how Germany could be so
| foolish to tie its economic destiny to such a problematic
| country as Russia.
|
| The answer seems to be "one step at a time." And Germany is not
| unique.
|
| Quite quick actually. The ex chancellor of germany [0] became
| Nord Streams' [1] Chairman of the Shareholders' Committee
| (since 2006)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schroder
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
|
| edit: correction and add link
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| And Rosneft _and_ Gazprom.
|
| It's completely brazen.
| throaway1721613 wrote:
| I think it's quite different. Gas can be understood as being
| sold by Country A to Country B (instead of business to business
| or business to consumer). Yes, there might be private firms
| involved, but Country A can stop the gas on a moment's notice
| if so desired. Also, there's likely no substitute for this gas
| in the midterm (months? years to get 3 new nuclear plants?).
| Finally, in terms of "responsibility", this was decided by the
| German government, not just by individual consumers /
| businesses that decided to buy more from Russia.
|
| The commercial relationship between the USA and China is much
| different. First, it consists of thousands of businesses and
| millions of consumers: it's not so easy to stop the flow (you
| can ban some of it, but there are workarounds). For many of
| those goods, there will be substitutes. Finally, this wasn't
| something explicitly decided by the USA government.
| quantum_solanum wrote:
| > In exchange the US got cheap goods (and low inflation), and
| continued supremacy of the dollar in world trade and as a
| reserve asset.
|
| And perhaps most importantly defused the worker radicalism of
| the 60s/70s by literally moving the means of production out
| from under them.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| And when it started to rise up again just a little bit with
| Occupy Wall Street, we got identity politics to ensure
| workers would never have that opportunity ever again.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I think the main key difference here, however, is that it is
| not the state (the US government) deciding to offshore any of
| this manufacturing. It is some rich fat cat American CEO who
| wanted a bigger paycheck.
|
| Thankfully for some very key industries we still have onshore
| manufacturing and that is increasing in modern times.
| jsnodlin wrote:
| mancerayder wrote:
| How much blame can we lay on the anti nuclear power activists?
|
| Or were there other reasons for not diving into that technology
| with two feet in front, rather than try to sunset it?
| imtringued wrote:
| > the sanctions on Russia have prompted what some observers are
| calling Bretton Woods III,
|
| You know, if you go down that path it will never end. It's like
| the gold standard. It's going to fail every single time.
| Bretton Woods is doomed to fail. It was doomed to fail the day
| it was introduced.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-regulator-tak...
| kome wrote:
| Gazprom Germania was basically a branch of the state even
| before... * _cheeky Gerhard Schroder emoji here*_
| pelasaco wrote:
| from the cyber security point of view, I'm quite sure the whole
| branch still under Russia's control (IT/OT wise)
| rootsudo wrote:
| Reminds me of the ending of Three days of the Condor. A great
| film, while it doesn't touch on the exact issue happening today
| w/ Russia, the ending has quite an emotional tinge about the ends
| justifying the means.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZNnDiDSUiI
| exabrial wrote:
| > The country has pledged to end the use of Russian gas by 2024
|
| Plenty of LNG ships and suppliers. Cheap gas is not worth an
| immense cost of human life. I think this timetable could be moved
| forward far quicker.
| kbelder wrote:
| Expensive gas also costs human life, and a national shortage
| over winter could easily kill hundreds, and ruin many more
| lives.
|
| That said, sometimes you do need to make tough geo-political
| decisions, where _every_ option has a horrible cost. While the
| primary blame falls on the aggressor nation, it doesn 't make
| those decisions easier.
| fareesh wrote:
| They seized the call center?
| pelasaco wrote:
| The TL;DR is:
|
| "Germany's economy minister announced the seizure in a statement
| on Monday. The move came after the ministry of economic affairs
| learned that Gazprom Germania had been acquired by JSC Palmary
| and Gazprom export business services LLC -- but it wasn't clear
| who the owners behind the two companies were, per the statement."
| quantum_state wrote:
| Where is the rule of law and protection of private property?
| gumby wrote:
| It's a classic fraudulent conveyance case. Normally it would
| simply work its way through the courts, but due to exigent
| circumstance and geopolitical circumstance they seized it. But
| the point of law is the same.
| lobochrome wrote:
| They sold the company to new owners on Friday who then tried to
| liquidate it. Gazprom Germania is the counterpart to Gas dealers
| and utilities. It then has an intra-company agreement with
| Gazprom Russia.
|
| If they had liquidated, those contracts would have been gone and
| the Gas dealers & utilities would have had to renegotiate new
| contracts with Gazprom Russia. This would have allowed them to
| require payments in Rubles instead of Euros.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Given the collapse(-ing) value of the Ruble, why would they
| want that?
| albertopv wrote:
| Ruble went down but then fully recovered
| petre wrote:
| Yup. Not fully but close enough. Too bad.
|
| https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB
| throw_5202 wrote:
| It's not a real exchange rate because there is no free
| exchange. Russian exporters forced to exchange 80% of hard
| currency to rubles. An individual can get maximum $10k in
| cash until at least 9th September:
| https://www.cbr.ru/eng/press/event/?id=12744 (and there are
| similar limits on international payments/transfers).
|
| When there is no free exchange rate is not very meaningful.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I stand corrected! I thought it was still way down.
| tazjin wrote:
| From what I've read, the contracts between Gazprom Germany and
| Gazprom Export (on the Russian side) do not have a fixed
| settlement currency.
|
| > This would have allowed them to require payments in Rubles
| instead of Euros
|
| "allowed" is a funny word - this situation is way past a point
| where cross-border contracts on either side hold any legal
| value. How are you going to hold anyone accountable for breach
| of contract?
| adonovan wrote:
| I've wondered about that question. Germany is not at war with
| Russia, Gazprom is a publicly traded company, and there are
| international courts that arbitrate such matters and could
| yet find the German government at fault. My non-lawyerly gut
| feeling is that, for better or worse, the trend of the last
| 30 years has been that the international mechanisms for
| enforcing contracts and property rights are now the strongest
| force in the legal universe, stronger than sovereignty and in
| some cases even human rights.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There is a lae, ftom what I've read, that requires sqle fo
| certain companies running critical infrastructure to be
| communicated and approved. Gazprom didn't do so, the German
| subsidiary was put under government control (not legal
| ownership) because of that.
|
| Honestly, I'm quite surprised how consistently and tough
| the new government plays the Ukraine crisis.
| tedivm wrote:
| Can you back that up with a source? It's the opposite of what
| basically everyone has been saying and I can't find anything
| that even hints that there isn't a fixed settlement currency
| in their contracts. Russia has been trying to push this issue
| for weeks, while Germany and others are refusing to pay in
| anything but euros.
| tazjin wrote:
| So most of this stuff is not public, so there is no single
| source to point you to, but from what people have puzzled
| together on various forums the structure is approximately
| this (corrections welcome):
|
| PAO Gazprom (the _actual_ Gazprom; PAO is a Russian joint-
| stock company) owns another Russian company (Gazprom Export
| OOO; OOO is a Russian LLC), which in turn _owned_ Gazprom
| Germania GmbH (GmbH is a German LLC).
|
| PAO Gazprom sold gas to Gazprom Export, which in turn sold
| gas to Gazprom Germania, which in turn sells the gas _to
| the actual European companies_.
|
| The change in Russian law which switches the currency to
| rubles affects the transactions between Gazprom Export OOO
| and Gazprom Germania GmbH (which were previously both owned
| by Russia), which made the settlement an "internal" affair
| of Gazprom for German exports.
|
| (This stuff is fairly well established and you can look at
| the German & Russian company registers, the legal text of
| the Russian decree etc. for more detailed information. The
| next part is less well understood)
|
| Previously this settlement took place through Gazprom
| Germania sending money from its German account(s) to an
| account of held in Gazprombank Luxembourg (GPB
| International S.A., a Luxembourgian Public Limited
| Company). This account may be a correspondence account for
| a Gazprombank Russia account owned by Gazprom Export, it's
| unclear. These funds can be frozen by the EU (and I think
| are, leading to the Russian claim that they're currently
| supplying some gas for "free").
|
| With the law change in Russia, this transfer must now
| happen to a new type of currency account established by
| Gazprombank Russia (though it's unclear / not publicly
| known how those are backed, e.g. whether it's also through
| correspondent accounts at GBP International S.A.) where it
| is automatically sold and converted into rubles, which are
| then transferred to Gazprom Export in Russia.
|
| Now an important bit that most people don't seem to get is
| that none of this affects _pricing_ , it's akin to a change
| in payment method. The supply contracts between e.g. the
| European gas purchasers and Gazprom Germania have
| complicated pricing schemes which are likely tied to one or
| more currencies (EUR & USD) and Russia is sticking to those
| pricing agremeents - but insisting on changing how the
| settlement happens.
|
| What is kind of unclear at the moment is what Gazprom
| stands to gain from the sale (and subsequent (attempted?)
| liquidation of Gazprom Germania). There are a handful of
| theories about this, but in practice we probably won't know
| for a while.
| neilwilson wrote:
| The Luxembourg entities are not on the EU sanctions
| list[0]. That entity will essentially own Russia's Euro
| reserves from now on.
|
| It's not as if this hasn't happened before. The
| 'EuroDollar' came about after the invasion of Hungary in
| 1956. Russia has just invented the 'RuskiEuro', which is
| how the Bank of Russia will hold Euros for the duration -
| probably in settlement accounts at the National Clearing
| Centre in Moscow.
|
| [0]: https://www.luxtimes.lu/en/business-finance/rubles-
| for-gas-p...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _' EuroDollar' came about after the invasion of Hungary
| in 1956_
|
| The first known eurodollar account was opened in France
| for China during the Korean War, in 1949 [1]. The
| phenomenon is a result of the Marshall Plan, which left
| lots of physical dollars overseas and thus outside U.S.
| jurisdiction.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar#History
| lobochrome wrote:
| I agree. And since the RuskiEuro will be backed by a
| massive amount of commodity it'll be fairly hard
| currency. Zoltan Poszar has been clear on this[0].
|
| My gut feeling is, that the EU, without any commodities,
| has a single choice: kick the Russian gas habit
| immediately, and force Russia to kill their western gas
| fields. Then pray they collapse in the next few years.
|
| If the EU keeps paying - Russia's new Gazprom central
| bank controlled RuskiEuro reserves will stabilize its
| economy and it will rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
| Even if we kick the gas habit, this might still happen if
| Putin keeps his thumb on public sentiment enough.
|
| [0]https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us-
| news/en/articles/news...
| petre wrote:
| President Trump was right about the gas terminal, North
| Stream 2 and >=2% GDP for NATO militaries. Of course it
| was coming from his advisors. But no, the EU leadership
| decided to live in fantasy land. Only Eastern European
| states, Poland and the Baltics understood.
| neilwilson wrote:
| In all international trade the buyer pays with the currency
| they have, and the seller receives the currency they want
| to hold.
|
| The banking system makes a handsome fee making that
| particular piece of alchemy happen.
|
| Gory details about how this particular trick is pulled off
| is here[0] if you're interested.
|
| [0]: https://new-wayland.com/blog/how-russian-gas-is-paid-
| for/
| op00to wrote:
| zivkovicp wrote:
| laurent92 wrote:
| Doesn't the ITO (International Trade Organization) regulate
| international contacts with allowed and non allowed
| sanctions? I think Western states are currently tied to it,
| they can't just impose "whatever" sanctions, and if we don't,
| it would be legal for Russia to impose sanctions upon us.
|
| Currently Russia has no right to sanction us, so anything
| they do is a further breach of ITO, which further deepens
| their case.
|
| Diplomacy is important. The good guy has to respect the
| rules, or at least write them so we pretend that there are
| rules we adhere to.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Doesn't the ITO (International Trade Organization)
| regulate international contacts_
|
| Venue depends on the contract. ITO only has jurisdiction
| where countries have submitted to it.
| tazjin wrote:
| > they can't just impose "whatever" sanctions
|
| They can and they do. Enforcing any kind of international
| agreements in this situation is pure fiction.
|
| > The good guy has to respect the rules
|
| The existence of a bad guy doesn't imply the existence of a
| good guy.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I'm concerned about the use of sanctions, and the
| individual targeting of wealthy individuals as being
| anathema to the Rule of Law, property rights, and free
| exchange.
|
| The dollar is inflating at the same time the reserve
| currency status is threatened, and we Americans, via our
| allies, are appropriating the stuff of foreigners, seizing
| boats, currency, gold, and property. I think >400B has been
| seized at this point.
|
| How long until we move from "Russia Bad!" to other groups,
| and start turning inward onto ourselves, seizing their
| property because they are politically unpopular?
| tazjin wrote:
| Russia is also consistently referring to the asset freeze
| as the Western countries defaulting on their obligations,
| which will resonate with countries that are not in the
| closest circle of the US.
| ganzuul wrote:
| One side does it with assassination.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| And the other does with suiciding.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Germany??
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I was mostly targeting USA with that comment.
|
| But germans have also murdered a lot of people not
| abiding by the societies rules, especially east germans
| back in the day.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Yes but let's not bring that up, it makes us look like a
| tinpot dictatorship nationalizing assets and assassinating
| people.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_t
| h...
| Traster wrote:
| This is a dispute between Germany and Russia. I'm not
| sure what US assassinations of middle eastern war lords
| have to do with it.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Hmmm, the larger dispute is between NATO and Russia. The
| USA is the head of NATO.
| ganzuul wrote:
| If this insane idea that the sovereign nations of Europe
| have no agency of their own comes from American
| "news"-branded edutainment, I dearly suggest you
| defenestrate your television set. It is clearly rotting
| minds.
| _3u10 wrote:
| For a "sovereign" nation Germany is awfully dependent on
| Putin for energy and the US for defense.
|
| My position is not that Germany has no agency it's that
| it traded away it's much of its agency to appease the
| Greens.
|
| These opinions come not from American TV but from my
| relatives.
|
| Freistaat Bayern uber alles!
|
| Sorry about taking over Europe again, hope you are
| enjoying the EU dictating your countries economic
| fortunes.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Talk like that gets you World War 3.
| _3u10 wrote:
| If people spent more time walking and less time talking
| world war 3 wouldn't have already started.
| holoduke wrote:
| Hardly any euro state has real power when it comes to
| real decisions. Most of the euro states are politically
| heavily influenced by financial injections from the US.
| Military bases everywhere. US companies everywhere. All
| tech is dominated by the US. Of course Russia sees the US
| as the master country and euro countries as their
| puppets.
| Traster wrote:
| If you really want to go down that road, it's Russia's
| gas that runs eastern Europe, not US cash. Yet still,
| Germany tells Russia where to stick it. This is quite
| clearly _not_ an economic decision.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It tends to come from russian propaganda efforts. They
| have to make this look like they're fighting the US and
| not a bunch of sovereign, not enemy nations.
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