Europe Question vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia

cawacko

cawacko

Well-known member
As I read more about the Ukraine/Russia situation I keep seeing comments about Europe needing a long-term strategy to become more self-sufficient militarily and economically (energy) wise. The EU is very dependent on the U.S. for its military defense and very dependent on the Middle East and Russia for its energy needs.

I believe Germany has decided to shut down all of its nuclear reactors and are going to natural gas fired plants which are suppose to be safer, unless you have to rely more on Russia for energy and gas needs.

My understanding is most of the EU has banned fracking as well which again makes them more reliant on the Middle East and Russia energy sources and the U.S. to protect the transportation of those fuels.

With these European concerns is there any way they are going to take a hard line against Putin? I'm not an expert on the area but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the EU needs to step up it's own defense and stop relying on America to be the world's police man.
 
cawacko said:
As I read more about the Ukraine/Russia situation I keep seeing comments about Europe needing a long-term strategy to become more self-sufficient militarily and economically (energy) wise. The EU is very dependent on the U.S. for its military defense and very dependent on the Middle East and Russia for its energy needs.

I believe Germany has decided to shut down all of its nuclear reactors and are going to natural gas fired plants which are suppose to be safer, unless you have to rely more on Russia for energy and gas needs.

My understanding is most of the EU has banned fracking as well which again makes them more reliant on the Middle East and Russia energy sources and the U.S. to protect the transportation of those fuels.

With these European concerns is there any way they are going to take a hard line against Putin? I'm not an expert on the area but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the EU needs to step up it's own defense and stop relying on America to be the world's police man.
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Yeah they do, but they won't. Stepping up defense would require them to cut A LOT of social welfare. And would likely see the end of the EU as we know it. So all in all we need to pull out of NATO ASAP.
 
DJ McSwagalicious said:
Yeah they do, but they won't. Stepping up defense would require them to cut A LOT of social welfare. And would likely see the end of the EU as we know it. So all in all we need to pull out of NATO ASAP.
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A good first step. They whine and bitch when we do anything anyway, we may as well let them whine about us not being there rather than because we are there.
 
What are the chances of the U.S. starting to export more gas or maybe oil to try and counter Russia's leverage?
 
cawacko said:
As I read more about the Ukraine/Russia situation I keep seeing comments about Europe needing a long-term strategy to become more self-sufficient militarily and economically (energy) wise. The EU is very dependent on the U.S. for its military defense and very dependent on the Middle East and Russia for its energy needs.

I believe Germany has decided to shut down all of its nuclear reactors and are going to natural gas fired plants which are suppose to be safer, unless you have to rely more on Russia for energy and gas needs.

My understanding is most of the EU has banned fracking as well which again makes them more reliant on the Middle East and Russia energy sources and the U.S. to protect the transportation of those fuels.

With these European concerns is there any way they are going to take a hard line against Putin? I'm not an expert on the area but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the EU needs to step up it's own defense and stop relying on America to be the world's police man.
Click to expand...

Germany is building over 20 coal power stations to reduce dependence on gas from Russia. It just goes to show how irrational the Greens are in Germany when they would rather that than stay nuclear. As for the UK, fracking is starting to happen despite the usual suspects being agin it. The Bowland Shale, which lies beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire, contains 50 percent more gas than the combined reserves of two of the largest fields in the United States, the Marcellus and Barnett fields. Interest is also being shown in underground coal gasification.
 
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cawacko said:
As I read more about the Ukraine/Russia situation I keep seeing comments about Europe needing a long-term strategy to become more self-sufficient militarily and economically (energy) wise. The EU is very dependent on the U.S. for its military defense and very dependent on the Middle East and Russia for its energy needs.

I believe Germany has decided to shut down all of its nuclear reactors and are going to natural gas fired plants which are suppose to be safer, unless you have to rely more on Russia for energy and gas needs.

My understanding is most of the EU has banned fracking as well which again makes them more reliant on the Middle East and Russia energy sources and the U.S. to protect the transportation of those fuels.

With these European concerns is there any way they are going to take a hard line against Putin? I'm not an expert on the area but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the EU needs to step up it's own defense and stop relying on America to be the world's police man.
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The EU is a neutered meaningless shell with a morass of red tape. Their budgets are bloated with Socialist welfare and they have all but gutted their defense in a failed effort to balance their budgets.

So no, there is nothing they can do and by gutting their nuclear generating capacity based on a myth, they will become even more dependent on the Soviet, I mean, Russian natural gas and Middle Eastern oil.
 
Abraxas said:
Germany is building over 20 coal power stations to reduce dependence on gas from Russia. It just goes to show how irrational the Greens are in Germany when they would rather that than stay nuclear. As for the UK, fracking is starting to happen despite the usual suspects being agin it. The Bowland Shale, which lies beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire, contains 50 percent more gas than the combined reserves of two of the largest fields in the United States, the Marcellus and Barnett fields. Interest is also being shown in underground coal gasification.
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Amazing isn't it? And there really isn't enough coal and the costs associated with extracting it and transporting it are much higher than with NG or nuclear.
 
cawacko said:
What are the chances of the U.S. starting to export more gas or maybe oil to try and counter Russia's leverage?
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In October 2013 the US was a net exporter of oil for the first time since 1995. When it comes to refined petroluem products, the US has been a net exporter for the past three years or so. We're projected to become a net exporter of natrual gas by the end of the decade.
 
aeprga said:
This presumes that we are their for their protection as opposed to being there to project our own influence. I don't think that presumption is warranted.
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Yes; the cold war never happened, East Germany was never partitioned off into an Eastern Bloc prison and the Soviets were actually protecting themselves from our efforts to expand McDonald's throughout the world and kill everyone off with cholesterol.

The Soviet invasion of the Czech Republican never happened either; that was the Soviets effort to protect Russian citizens. ;)
 
aeprga said:
In October 2013 the US was a net exporter of oil for the first time since 1995. When it comes to refined petroluem products, the US has been a net exporter for the past three years or so. We're projected to become a net exporter of natrual gas by the end of the decade.
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Really? I find this claim fascinating in that we are still one of the largest importers of oil from Canada, Venezuela and Mexico. We still import about 14% of our oil from Middle Eastern sources. So anyone with even half a brain and not desperately glomming onto any good news story to defend the sorry state this economy is in would ask; if we are a net exporter, why all the imports?

Here's a great article that breaks this moronic claim down to size of which I will only post the relevant paragraphs:

De-constructing the WSJ's front page story, “U.S. nears milestone: net fuel exporter”
by Jeffrey J. Brown, originally published by Energy Bulletin | Dec 2, 2011

On November 30, the front page of the Wall Street Journal carried what seemed to be an story U.S. Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter by Liam Pleven and Russell Gold. It begins:

U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and other oil-based fuels are soaring, putting the nation on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years.

A combination of booming demand from emerging markets and faltering domestic activity means the U.S. is exporting more fuel than it imports, upending the historical norm.

According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.

...............

Over the same time frame, 2004 to 2010, US consumption fell from 20.7 mbpd to 19.1 mbpd, a decline of 1.6 mbpd. Based on the BP data, US net oil imports fell from 13.5 mbpd in 2004 to 11.6 mbpd in 2010, a decline of 1.9 mbpd. Declining consumption resulted in 84% of the 2004 to 2010 decline in US net oil imports.

Therefore, the primary contributor to the US becoming a net exporter of refined products and the primary contributor to the decline in US net oil imports is declining consumption in the US, as the US and many other developed countries have been forced, post-2005, to take a declining share of a falling volume of Global Net Exports (GNE), which are calculated in terms of Total Petroleum Liquids.

So, the WSJ reporters are taking a symptom of Peak Exports, i.e., declining US oil consumption, and presenting it as a positive story.

...................

There are apparently 196 countries in the world. If we assume about a half dozen inconsequential net oil exporters, in addition to the top 33 net oil exporters that we studied, that leaves about 157 net oil importing countries. So, if we extrapolate current trends, just two of these net oil importers, China & India, would consume 100% of the global supply of (net) exported oil in only 19 years, leaving nothing for the other 155 current net oil importing countries.

I continue to be mystified that this factual statement is not the #1 story in the world.

Here is an interesting comment from a blogger on The Oil Drum (tye454):


. . . the government and banks are going to pull every trick or lie or cheat that they're able to, because the alternative is their very own destruction.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2...-story-“us-nears-milestone-net-fuel-exporter”
 
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