Fears that Europe could be engulfed by a winter energy crisis reached new heights yesterday after the Russian energy supplier Gazprom extended the shutdown of gas flows it had imposed through its key Nord Stream 1 pipeline into Germany.
Unlike Spud’s insistence that we just have a shortage of money to pay for it. It’s a real energy shortage. Which means that the solution is in more energy, not more money.
Why not buy energy from the middlemen Russia now sells to, printing the money demanded by the middlemen for the new cuts for the middlemen?
That is already happening
The Chinese have been buying Russian gas and are now selling it to the West at hugely inflated prices.
If there was a shortage of money to pay for it, wouldn’t that mean a shortage of demand, which would in turn bring down the cost?
Sorry, almost used a brain cell there for a second.
Otto,
On a similar note I have read that a significant amount of the US oil reserve which was recently released with such fanfare by Biden in order to temporarily reduce US gas prices to merely twice as much as they were under Trump, ended up in Chinese hands.
@John
If you ask CNN, that’s Russian propaganda.
Just like Hunter’s laptop.
We Do Actually Have A Shortage Of Energy
Yes, and it’s entirely self-inflicted.
They are still “debating” whether to keep the nukes open in Germany. The latest argument against was that “they only contribute 5% of the national electricity supply” ! The answer of course are more reliables.
They fucking deserve the lightd to go off.
Last I saw they were talking about keeping 2 out 3 going.
I’ve also seen lots of Swedes complaining that if they don’t leave them all on Sweden shouldn’t export any more electricity to northern Germany (where the nuke they’re still proposing to shut down is located) at the expense of higher prices at home.
Germany is going out of its way to piss off all its neighbours.
“the solution is in more energy”: or the elimination of useless eaters, especially in Ely.
Come to think of it if we did simply expel all the Greens and Reds everything would be hunkey-dory. Or, how about this? We enslave them and sell them to the Barbary Coast and points south. We’d be selling them in exchange for oil and gas, presumably. Win, win.
Of course it’s a matter of money… Just not in the way the Potato envisions.
Quickstart the frackers so that there actually will be gas.
Set up and build sufficient nukes to guarantee base load.
Keep the coal plants that haven’t been decommisioned going for a bit longer.
Won’t make much difference this winter, but the russian-ukraine kerfuffle will drag on like an inflamed pustule for the next couple of years.
And whichever way you look at it, economic canctions against the “Bad Guy” that also provides some 50% of your energy needs with no way to compensate for it is…well…monumentally stupid..
Of course this means telling the Green Religion to put a sock in it, but honestly, that’s a pleasant bonus in this case.
If TPTB can shut down a country over a failed flu, they should be able to tell a lobby club to park it and bugger off while making sure the country’s needs are actually met.
Eh… Who am I kidding?…. 🙁
‘We enslave them and sell them to the Barbary Coast and points south.’
Charming idea dearieme.
We evidently think the same way. You have my sympathy.
Yeah but who’d have them ?
It’d be like the auction in Carry on Cleo.