[dmpk2k]

This is all true, and yet ignores the price of production and transportation. Once the various Power Of Siberia pipelines are all complete, China may be getting gas cheaper than any price Europe can get.

As for Russia viewing China with suspicion... that's true of the West too, and yet it has been piping gas and oil to Germany since the 1960s.

[ericmay]

> As for Russia viewing China with suspicion... that's true of the West too, and yet it has been piping gas and oil to Germany since the 1960s.

The point wasn’t that Russia doesn’t engage with other countries, it’s that Russia won’t engage too closely with China so there isn’t as much for American strategists to worry about there. Not to mention China is economically dependent on the U.S., EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other western-aligned nations. Vacationing in Nice is way more fun than vacationing in Siberia. The Russian economy is an afterthought and that was before sanctions.

> This is all true, and yet ignores the price of production and transportation. Once the various Power Of Siberia pipelines are all complete, China may be getting gas cheaper than any price Europe can get.

Sure… but there’s a few things here:

1) alternative energy sources become more and more economically viable so they get built in Europe - oil/nat gas producers don’t want too much of this happening if they can avoid it

2) the market is global, so increase in purchases from Russia means decreases in purchases from other countries - if your demand is 100 barrels and you buy 50 from Saudi Arabia and 50 from Russia and then you buy 60 from Russia instead and buy 40 from Saudi Arabia the excess supply of 10 barrels has to get sold somewhere, and potentially at a lower price (remember when the spot price of oil went negative? [1])

3) OPEC (at least pre-war) has some “say” in setting the global price for oil

4) there are different types of oil for different uses so a new pipeline is just one piece of the supply puzzle

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a...

[dmpk2k]

The dependence between China and the West works both ways, and yet look what is happening. Regardless of the reasoning why it should not, the direction is clear, and it won't be the first time that economies have been terribly damaged due to security concerns. We'll just have to leave this one to the history books.

Much of the rest you write is true, but once again we come to production and transportation costs. If the price of extraction and transportation drops below a profitable level over the long term, production will drop. If Russia can extract and transport gas at a lower energy cost than any other producer can do the same for Europe, Europe will have an increased disadvantage in manufacturing until sufficiently cheap alternatives are built. You're certainly aware of this, so I'm not even clear what we're debating here.

[ericmay]

> The dependence between China and the West works both ways, and yet look what is happening.

Yes it does, but the economies of the West are so far and beyond Russia that China is not at least publicly taking a strong pro-Russia stance.

> Regardless of the reasoning why it should not, the direction is clear, and it won't be the first time that economies have been terribly damaged due to security concerns. We'll just have to leave this one to the history books.

I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about here. Would you care to elaborate? For example, I wouldn't say any direction is clear. History and humanity is far too crazy and unpredictable for that. But if I had to take a stab I'd say the direction that's clear here is that the West and its diplomatic resolve was far stronger than China or Russia anticipated, and China would prefer to stay in salvageable graces with the West than to meaningfully assist Russia - if anything it seeks to take advantage of Russia's weakened position.

> Much of the rest you write is true, but once again we come to production and transportation costs. If the price of extraction and transportation drops below a profitable level over the long term, production will drop. If Russia can extract and transport gas at a lower energy cost than any other producer can do the same for Europe, Europe will have an increased disadvantage in manufacturing until sufficiently cheap alternatives are built. You're certainly aware of this, so I'm not even clear what we're debating here.

Idk either because I was mostly responding to your specific comment regarding American strategists "being concerned" as you noted. I noted that European countries can bring online alternative energy sources, and that the energy market is more global (oil and gas specifically) so China buying Russian gas wasn't as big of a deal to American strategists as you implied.

I'm not sure the relevancy here of production and transportation costs specifically and even more specifically without specific analysis. As I noted previously, there are different grades of oil, for example. Just because a pipeline comes online doesn't mean that all of a sudden China has cheap oil and nobody else does, particularly because all they are doing is replacing suppliers in some instances and not in other instances. In the case where they are replacing suppliers those suppliers either have to take production offline, or they have to sell elsewhere. If China's demand is 100 barrels and they get 50 from Russia and 50 from Saudi Arabia and then they now get 60 from Russia and 40 from Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia is still going to sell those 10 barrels (now available on the market) or lower supply to protect prices. Again this is also an oversimplification! Nobody has provided anything other than armchair economics.

You're trying to vastly simplify the global energy and oil and gas markets to make a point, but I'm largely rejecting that point for the reasons stated previously and also here.