Although the troubles with Nord Stream 1 are well known, the termination of the other pipelines is less well understood. Poland for example closed the Jamal pipeline due to the war in Ukraine:
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/poland-terminates-yamal-gas-...
We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways, so at this point even if the pipelines were re-opened and the equipment properly repaired, it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe. Unreliable partner after all compared to China, India and elsewhere. Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately.
It is assumed that Russia sent a warning message to EU countries not to interfere. Fortunately, most EU countries recognized that Russia was no longer a reliable supplier. And imposed sanctions, delivered weapons anyhow.
Russia thought they could threaten their most important customers. The problem Russia now has, it that there is hardly any capacity to sell gas to other countries. Building pipelines will take many years and will have to happen without western technology (I'm sure Russia would like China to own their pipelines). Or Russia has to build more LNG terminals, but that is also not ideal. And ship from western countries probably won't go there.
Of course, the downside of relying to much on Russian gas is that EU countries now have to deal with an enormous energy shortage.
The Russians are selling more to China and India since the war. The higher price of gas means in the short run they are making more money.
Yes, some sanctions might be annoying, in the way a mosquito is annoying to you, but basically nothing europe has done has really had an impact. (Most weapons have come from the US).
So while parts of what you say is true, frankly the situation is terrible for Europe, quite bad for Russia, and pretty awesome for the US
Yes, Russia makes a lot more money at the moment because the small amount of gas they still sell to EU countries is expensive enough that it nets more money.
Anybody who has been following the war a bit will notice that Russia is now seriously running out of modern weapons. By the time tanks from the early 60s show up at the front line, you can be sure something is wrong. At the moment, and due sanctions, Russia has a bit of a production problem.
Since the 2014 sanctions, Russia has a bit a problem with obtaining micro-electronics. The effects of that are also quite noticeable.
In any case. Over the summer, EU countries managed to fill their gas storage while producing enough electricity to keep most stuff running. So yes, the situation is bad for the economy and EU countries have to figure how to help people pay their energy bill, etc. But if the current situation is 'terrible' then I wonder what word has to be used for a real disaster.
I have no interest in discussing this with you as you're not here with good intentions, but I would let others know that Western countries were very accommodating with the spare parts, which in practice called the Russian bluff. I doubt Germany will go back to Russian gas after they pulled this one.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-...
First point is true, but the second ist not. Germany went out its way to ensure all contracts are fulfilled to avoid this claim.
> it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe.
Russia very much wants to go back to selling gas and oil to europe, they have after all no other relevant industries and pipelines to China/India don't have the capacity to replace european delivery.
> Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately.
Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict and to be relegated to a possible chinese puppet state in the future.
how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?
> "Repeated case of interference of the Bank of Russia into implementation of the budget rule in terms of foreign currency purchases means that the floating currency rate regime existed from the end of 2014 until early 2018 is ‘only on paper now’ and is actually substituted by regulation of the currency market by the Bank for Russia for the purpose of eliminating threats for financial stability, jeopardized by the budget rule effect,"
https://tass.com/economy/1026029
This was 4 years ago, and is even more so true now. The ruble at the moment is NOT free floating.
Russia is the definite loser out of this, and indeed everyone is, the decision to invade was a catastrophe for everyone on multiple levels.
I always find it strange when people post comments like this. It is a clear indicator you don't understand financial markets.
If you were to look at the data yourself, you would see in Oct 2017 it was 58.11 and in Oct 2022 it is 57.88 (vs USD)
In your opinion, what does this indicate? FX is always "Currency vs currency", so has the Ruble weakened? Perhaps the US dollar strengthened? What caused the change? Is the change even meaningful?
Is the change "market driven" or has the state intervened?
It looks like the state has been actively defending it, so what is your actual point?
It's well known that this is not true. You are perpetuating russian propaganda.
Anyway it doesn't matter. NS2 is there ready and waiting to go, but Germany won't switch it on ... due to sanctions.
There are another two gas pipelines that are available to Russia (bypassing Poland), which they have also used a bit during the first NS1 shutdown, but they reduced/stopped deliveries via them too - NS2 wouldn't change anything about that either. At this point it's obvious what Russia is trying to do. They went all-in with stopping of the gas deliveries to try to get the West to stop supporting Ukraine. But it looks like they might have played that card too late.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanction-exemption-f...
And nobody, not the Canadian government, not the British government nor Siemens is disputing that the equipment needed maintenance.
Now that's changed and Siemens is claiming it's safe to run a high pressure gas pipeline when the machinery is broken and leaking. That is absurd - if there's one place safety is critical it's right next to a pipeline full of explosive gas. We can safely assume Siemens is under tremendous pressure to support this Ruskies-doing-it-to-us narrative as a consequence.
Yes, all the pipelines were closed due to sanctions. Russia was still pumping gas at full speed through one of the pipelines that passed through Ukraine as recently as August:
https://www.ft.com/content/8ed4ccdb-522a-4003-8010-1a786af18...
It got shut down because Ukraine could not receive transit fees from Russia due to EU banking sanctions. EU was "looking into it". Their sanctions turn out to block things they didn't intend all the time.
If our governments really thought Russia was lying about the equipment they could just authorize NS2 and then say - see? - when no gas flows. They aren't doing that. Instead they blocked all the other pipelines via sanctions and then let the last one break, again due to sanctions. Then having successfully blocked Russian gas they blamed Russia for it, knowing full well after COVID that people will happily swallow almost anything no matter how contradictory it is.
It's very much in Russia's interest to shift blame away from themselves to sow dissent (which you are totally falling for) and also perhaps for later court cases about breaches of contracts (not sure how relevant that continues to be).
The FT article is talking about oil and not gas. It also explicitly states that oil and gas payments were exempt from sanctions. I think that (plus your other replies with similar factual errors) is more than enough evidence for me to conclude that you are arguing in bad faith.
"It's very much in Russia's interest to shift blame away from themselves to sow dissent"
The argument you're making here about Putin playing 4D chess is totally illogical. It only sounds right to you because of years of nonsense from certain political quarters about social media bots, "sowing dissent" etc as a way to explain their domestic woes, not because it makes sense.
Russia's actual interest here is to trade gas for money + ending of general sanctions against them and maybe ending of support for Ukrainian forces. That's it, that's what they want. Pretending very specific pieces of equipment are broken in very specific ways is the exact opposite of what's in their interests because it means saying "ending narrow sanctions on one sector is sufficient to get gas moving again", instead of delivering ultimatums about general geopolitical goals.
If the gas was being stopped to try and force Europe out of the Ukrainian war then it would all have stopped overnight in one go, and Russia would have stated very clearly "the gas is stopped because we want you to change tactics, and we will resume it the moment you do so". They haven't done this. Conclusion: they do actually want to sell gas to Europe.
"The FT article is talking about oil and not gas. It also explicitly states that oil and gas payments were exempt from sanctions"
What it states is that nobody is denying that the payments couldn't be made.
Western governments have all sorts of intentions they routinely screw up and the whole sanctions regime is very decentralized. It works by punishing anyone retroactively found to have been violating sanctions, where "violation" is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. It's very easy for high level bureaucrats in Brussels to say "everything is sanctioned, you got to prison if you violate these vague rules, but stuff we want isn't sanctioned" and assume everyone will just do what they intend (both in the civil service and in industry). But the cost of getting it wrong for finance workers is prison time so it's obvious they're going to be hyper-conservative, hence the constant blockages and problems. This is a normal factor of sanctions regimes, they always whack all kinds of random innocent third parties that weren't intended to be sanctioned at all due to stuff like name collisions or bureaucratic cockups, and we aren't even talking about mistaken identities here.
"also perhaps for later court cases about breaches of contracts"
The EU seized - as in stole - all the Euros Russia had earned by selling gas but hadn't already converted into rubles and then prevented payments to Russia in euros, even though the gas contracts were denominated in that currency! This was an utterly unprecedented move given Russia and EU countries aren't at war. Contracts are thus irrelevant at this point, the EU tore them up right at the start. If anyone would sue anyone in courts of law it'd be Russia suing the EU (not that they'd be able to).
"Re: spare turbines, leaks etc"
Do you think it's reasonable to expect Gazprom employees to work with equipment after being cut off from all support by the manufacturers? Think about how allergic big companies are to even running software that isn't under a support contract, and that's in way lower stakes situations. Also, Siemens is a manufacturer that can remotely monitor and even control those turbines - one of Gazprom's concerns is that Siemens will remotely disable the turbines (again due to sanctions) and they want written legal assurance it won't happen. That's a very mild response all things considered. If I were a gas engineer I wouldn't consider such an assurance as worth the paper it was printed on.
Fundamentally, the west built and to some extent still runs that NS1 pipeline. The NS2 pipeline was built with Russian equipment and Russia has been clear that they could have turned it on at any point Germany wanted .. right up until both NS2 and NS1 appear to have been blown up this morning. Whichever country did that very obviously believes Russia will sell gas through both pipelines given a chance.
You are underestimating the complexity of this issue. There are long term delivery contracts that force Gazprom/Russia to deliver. All the things you are seeing are thinly veiled attempts to create a "force majeure" exception as a superficial narrative to shift blame and still cause damage.
Don't be naive.
Nope, it just broke.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/26/nord-stream...
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-germany-berlin-swe...
Well known? Is it? Could you please give some reference then?
No one would be surprised to see a "work-to-rule" action, but how is it "russian propaganda" that Europe had sanctioned Russian energy industry and it "somehow" had consequences?
The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies.
I don't need peer-reviewed double-blinded study. I need something that has at least a bit more substance than "well known", "obvious" or other argumentum ad populum
> The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies.
The ground truth is that the US and Europe (for however justified reason) had declared an economic war against Russia (sanctions), which has no means or strength to wage a real economic war of its own. And another ground truth is that they were not properly thought through as 2/4 pipelines are sanctioned and cannot be used, financial operations are sanctioned and cannot normally be performed, technology export and maintenance is sanctioned. All this to disrupt Russia's operations, while Europe STILL depends on it.
Replace Russia with any random variable and you would still get the same effect if you don't mind where you shoot and nuke half your own energy market. It doesn't even have any real means to "punish poor Europeans with all it's economic might", otherwise there wouldn't be ANY gas flowing to Europe for months now. Instead Russia simply does absolutely nothing to mitigate Europe's own risks of continuing running operations restricted and sanctioned all around by itself, while still profiting from it.
Please stop defending incompetence and labeling every uncomfortable piece of reality as "Russian propaganda".
But to no-one's big surprise, Russia has declined. So the conclusion is obvious.
It would of course be interesting to do a 40 page research essay in the style of WaitButWhy every time Russia makes a statement that fails to pass the smell test -- reeeeeeally document in detail why the statement is lower probability than a lie. The problem is, Russian authorities routinely lie, so often that following this strategy would lead to spending all one's time authoring (and then communicating) these explanations. Such a course of action is nothing but playing right along with the intentions of the propaganda.
If Russia one day wakes up and makes a true but surprising statement and no one believes them, they will only have themselves to thank for it.
That German energy politics since March 11 2011 has been a shitshow of incompetence is something we can both agree on, but Russia's present-day capitalization on this mistake is anything but.
What "problems" are you referring to specifically? It would be nice to read some source, cuz to my knowledge there are quite a lot of warranty nuances - it would be curious to see something substiantial on the matter, coming from official sources, that are not Russian, even if confirmed by Siemens engineers on-site.
> Russian state energy giant Gazprom cut all deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday in what it said was a planned shutdown until Saturday for maintenance work.
> In recent months, Gazprom has slashed flows through Nord Stream 1 to just 20% of capacity, citing maintenance issues and blaming Western sanctions on exports of technology imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
> Russia has also cut off supplies to several “unfriendly” European countries and energy companies over their refusal to pay for gas in rubles, as the Kremlin insists, rather than the euros or dollars stated in contracts. European leaders say Russia is trying to blackmail countries over their support for Ukraine.
> France’s Engie (EGIEY) is the latest casualty. On Tuesday, Gazprom said it would completely suspend deliveries to Engie (EGIEY) from Thursday, claiming that it had not received full payment from the company for the gas it supplied in July.
Someone can probably look up Gazprom's own PR response and see how it matches up (or doesn't) with the statement by Engie, as well as what differs. Most of the time it's good to look up what various sources say, if you're interested in it, and come to your own conclusions.
From my perspective, reliance on another country, the relations with which have historically been troubled (and are now further strained, given the geopolitical events), does not seem like the best of ideas - alternative means of securing the resources that are needed for providing electricity/heat are more than welcome.
Add to that the NS2 pipeline, that could have been started, but never was. And Yamal-Europe pipeline that was shutdown by due to sanctions.
Diversification of supply is a good thing, sure, but how would it affect the competitiveness of European industry is a curious matter.
India's buying the excess gas from Russia though, so they have access to a seller that Europe won't touch.