Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by keewee7 1258 days ago
As a European I'm glad the CIA/Poland/aliens blew up the pipelines that were funding the Russian invasion.

Even the environmental effect was minor; the methane emission from the leaks had 1/5th of the GHG effect of my small country's, Denmark, annual GHG emission.
1 comments
pphysch 1258 days ago
Europe continues to send more money than ever to Russia [1], whether by proxy or not. Industrial terrorism against Germany, by US/UK/etc., does not change that.

What is does do is reinforce the European dependency on Washington, as evidenced by this post.

1 - https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/russia-s-oil-...

link
ManuelKiessling 1258 days ago
No question the European dependency on Washington is currently reinforced.

However, it just occured to me that LNG terminals have one big advantage over a Russia-Europe pipeline: There is exactly one country that can send gas through a pipline that starts in Russia.

There are many countries that can send ships to our LNG terminals.

If, how, and when we make use of that flexibility is another question completely, of course.

link
Zanfa 1258 days ago
This was true because of the all time high natural gas prices (€350/MWh) and high oil prices, both of which have now dropped to pre-war levels (~€70/MWh).
link
pphysch 1258 days ago
"Pre-war levels" is a disingenuous sleight-of-hand. Gas was at €15-20 in winter 20-21 before Zelensky declared his intent to assault Sevestapol, after which the price gradually quadrupled. All before Russia invaded.
link
Zanfa 1258 days ago
It's really not if we're talking about the sum of payments to Russia from EU for oil/gas. Before the 24th, the share of Russian gas was hovering above 50% of total EU imports and when the price skyrocketed, the dollar value of imports did as well. Your link cuts off at Q2 2022, which is when the price was at it's highest. Since then, Russian gas imports have dropped off a cliff as well as the price. As of Dec 2022, EU imported only about 1/5 of the amount of gas from Russia that they did Dec 2021. Given the new (and planned) LNG capabilities, that percentage will only keep dropping.

So yes, EU did pay the most money they've ever paid for gas to Russia, but that was a one-off situation, which is not going to repeat. Russia overplayed it's hand.

link
NicoJuicy 1258 days ago
Russia invaded in 2014
link
pphysch 1258 days ago
Gas was not even close to €70 in 2014.
link
NicoJuicy 1258 days ago
> All before Russia invaded.

Russia invaded in 2014...

link