Skip to main content

Russia and Natural Gas Imperialism

By Eric McErlain
More details on the "pay up or freeze" natural gas deal between Russia and Ukraine are beginning to leak out. Here's Jackson Diehl at the Washington Post:
Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, and Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov had agreed to purchase Ukraine's gas through a Swiss trading company whose owners and beneficiaries are publicly unknown -- but are rumored to include senior officials and organized crime figures in both Russia and Ukraine. They granted this same shadowy company a 50 percent share in the business of delivering gas to Ukrainian consumers. They accepted a price deal on gas delivered to Ukraine lasting only a few months but guaranteed that rock-bottom rates charged by Ukraine for the storage and transit of Russian gas to the West would be frozen for 25 years.

What does this have to do with democracy in Europe? In effect, some U.S. experts concluded, the Ukrainians may have sold to Putin that which he was prevented from stealing: a Kremlin stranglehold on Ukraine's government. The Russian leader poured money and men into his huge neighbor in late 2004 in a blatant bid to install a pro-Moscow strongman as president and make Ukraine's political system a mirror of the new authoritarian Russian order. His overreach triggered the Orange Revolution and the subsequent democratic election of Yushchenko, whose goals include leading Ukraine to membership in NATO and the European Union.
Harm De Bilj thinks he has an answer.

For more, visit The Washington Realist and The Oil Rules.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Mr. Putin is visiting a former Soviet satellite, Hungary. From RIA-Novosti:

Hungary is the leading consumer of Russian natural gas in central and eastern Europe. Since 1975, when the supplies began, the country has received about 164 billion cubic meters of Russian gas totaling roughly 80% of Hungarian gas imports.

Under a contract with Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom, Hungary will be provided with up to 10 billion cu m of gas every year until 2015.

Hungary is also the transit country for Russian gas designated for Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, with the transit close on 2.4 billion cu m in 2005.

Russia is the leading oil importer for Hungary. LUKoil, Russia's no.1 independent crude producer, delivered about 6.4 million metric tons of oil (128,500 bbl/d) in 2005. The company also owns a chain of gasoline stations in the country.

I wonder how the Hungarian government, now a part of NATO, is feeling today? And do you think it's any accident that the three Baltic states, all three of which were bypassed by the proposed Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline, announced yesterday that they would jointly build a nuclear power plant? More from RWDB.

But despite all this news, there are still some folks who would rather be at the mercy of the Russian natural gas supply.

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

Comments

Anonymous said…
It's not a straight choice between Nuclear power and dependancy on Russian gas supplies in Scotland. And to pretend it is, is a bit cheeky to say the least. By moving to a decentralised energy generation system, Greenpeace have shown that we can save the equivalent of the output of three nuclear power stations in the UK, as generating power at close to the point where it used is vastly more efficient than transporting it huge distances from large power stations. By aiming for a target of 30% of energy from larger scale renewables, research has shown that this will reduce UK energy bills. I don't doubt that we'll need extra non- renewable capacity too in the medium term. This could be natural gas, or it could be clean coal technology, or a mixture of both. Scotland has an abundance of fossil fuel energy resources inlcuding coal and North Sea supplies (even if the latter are in decline now). It also has the best renewable resource in Europe. It is therefore incorrect to compare the situation in Scotland with Central and Eastern Europe.

Given all this. Why would we in Scotland want to consider Nuclear?

1 - Nuclear is more expensive than almost any other form of generation.
2 - Nuclear is not carbon neutral. It will become less so as more of the high grade Uranium ores are used up, and more energy is required to mine and process the lower grade ores.
3 - There is no accepted solution in the UK for where we will store our Nuclear waste.
4 - Judging by the composition of the scottish parliament - The majority of the people in Scotland do not want new Nuclear power.

This discussion is set out at www.leithalwit.squarespace.com
March 2, 2006 at 6:37 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