Skip to main content

Putin Follows Through On Gas Cutoff Threat

By Eric McErlain
Here's a situation in Europe worth keeping an eye on:
Russia took Europe to the brink of a winter energy crisis yesterday when it carried out a Cold War-style threat and halted gas deliveries to Ukraine, the main conduit for exports to the West.

With a quarter of its gas supplied by Russia, Europe is facing serious disruption and price rises for as long as the dispute rumbles on.

Moscow turned off the tap at 10 a.m. after Ukraine refused to sign a new contract with the Russian state monopoly Gazprom quadrupling prices...

If Ukraine's reserves run out, it could be tempted to siphon off gas intended for other countries. It claims the right to do so in lieu of transit fees.

The cut-off coincided with Russia assuming the rotating presidency of the G8 leading industrialised nations.

In Britain, millions of families started paying higher fuel prices yesterday.

Scottish and Southern Energy raised prices by 13.6 per cent, adding approximately £50 to the average annual bill, while electricity charges will go up by 12 per cent, or about £30 a year.

Npower puts its rises into effect today, adding 14.5 per cent for gas and 13.6 per cent for electricity.
This might be a good time to point out that as local natural gas supplies in Europe and North America are drawn down, three of the leading international sources of natural gas are Russia, Algeria and Iran.

For more, check out the New York Times. To follow the conversation in the Blogosphere, click here.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Apologies for the offtopic comment, but a question has come up at the nuclear power article at the Wikipedia that the readers of this blog may be able to help me with.

Have any of you come across an individual named Terry Oldberg, who claims that there are statistical flaws in the NRC's risk assessment methods? A paper by Oldberg is published here. If so, is his work well known in the nuclear safety community?

I can't find any evidence that his work has been cited anywhere, but nuclear safety is well outside my field of expertise.

Hope somebody with the requisite expertise can help, and sorry again for the offtopic posting.
January 3, 2006 at 4:17 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap
1 comment
Read more

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

By
Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
Post a Comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin
Post a Comment
Read more