The Ghost of Nord Stream Haunts The EU

By Rhod Mackenzie

The Ghost Of Nord Stream continues to haunt Europe. Russia has pivoted to Asia with its energy output,it has increased gas supplies to China through the Power of Siberia Pipeline and a second pipeline is planned,LNG supplies to Asia continue to increase and Europe is in a quandry after turning its back on Russian pipeline gas.
Its not that it has given up on Russian pipeline gas,every day some 40 million cubic m of gas goes via the Ukraine transit sytem to countries like Slovakia,Czech Republic and Austria and by the way the Ukrainians still get paid by the Russians for that supply. Also some 35 million cubic metres per day is transported throught Turkish stream via the Black Sea and supplies countries in the Balkans including Serbia and Austria both of which want to continue to recieve Russian pipeline gas. The main reason these countries want the gas is that is cheaper than all the other altenatives available and Gazprom is a reliable supplier.

The blowing up of three of the four branches of the Nord Stream pipelines was the biggest act of industrial sabotage in history and yet still no culprit has been officially identified. This is despite the Swedes and the Danes allegedly carrying out investigations ( the pipelines transited their economic areas of the Baltic sea)Now it seems that Germany is looking into the matter which is hardly surprising since they were the main vicitims of the sabotage and the pipelines were 30% owbed by German companies.Given its almost two years since the sabotage took place what has taken them so long? Particularly when its so obvious that no small illequiped terrorist groupd could carry it out and the obvious question than needs to be answered about who would then directly benefit.
By the way, European investigators, who, naturally, were very actively helped in this by the Americans, have still not found either the perpetrators or those behind the sabotage. Despite the fact that they manage to find a Russian trace in all more or less large “emergency situations” almost instantly.
Of Course its pretty obvious that the sbaotage was carried out by either the USA or the UK or they did it together,nobody else has the capability to carry out such an operation and it needed the cover of a major distraction and what would be better than a NATO Baltic Sea exercise.

Now the people of Europe are finally waking up to the consequences of cutting ties with Russia over energy supplies and the costs associated with doing so.They were told that getting rid of dependence Russian gas would give them energy independenc from Russia but all that has happened is they have abandoned cheap pipeline gas for expensive LNG from other sources and have seen their living standards drop and their industries collapse.
The people of Europe, despite all the statements about the transition to renewable energy sources, was have been unable to completely abandon the “blue” fuel. But the transition to other suppliers turned out to be not smooth, because purchasing gas in liquefied form is more expensive than purchasing it in its natural form, from pipeliness, and a sufficient amount of LNG had to be found somewhere else.

The looked to the Qatar but they were in the midst of a huge project to expand the gas sector. . But in 2022, it had almost no “free” Qatari gas left, because almost all of it was distributed under long-term contracts under which QatarEnergy operates.
Of course, Europe did buy some gas from Qatar in 2022, but it was impossible to replace tens of billions of cubic meters of Russian pipeline gas with it. Europeans also bought gas from Australia, another major exporter of LNG, but taking into account the distance between continents and the cost of transportation, of course, these purchases turned out to be small in comparison with what Europe needed.
Therefore, Brussels chose its “big brother”, which is located on the opposite shore of the Atlantic Ocean and was eager to help the allies, without, of course, offending itself. For American and, first of all, US gas sectorers, golden times have come. Washington also insisted on a sharp expansion of production and export of liquefied gas. Who started this whole grandiose geopolitical combination with the deterioration of relations with Russia, the transformation of Ukraine into a springboard against Moscow and thousands of anti-Russian sanctions with one of the main goals - to oust Russian gas from Europe and replace it with American gas. It must be said that American politicians coped well with this difficult task in their own way.

Europe it seems must be grateful that American politicians and intelligence agencies, who solve all Washington’s geopolitical problems, managed to “flood” Europe with expensive liquefied gas thanks not only and not so much to their intelligence and professionalism, but to the readiness of many European politicians to reject Russian gas. They had long been looking for a convenient excuse to break off many years of mutually beneficial cooperation, on which, by the way, the “German industrial export miracle” and the transformation of Germany into the main economic engine of the continent were largely based, and decided to take advantage of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As a result of such a successful coincidence for America of their desires and plans fitted with those of Europeans, the United States now provides Europe with almost half of the LNG imported by Europeans. Deliveries have doubled over the past two years. In terms of volumes, LNG has now surpassed pipeline gas, which the EU continues to buy from Norway, Algeria, Azerbaijan and a number of other countries, not excluding the greatly reduced amount of Russian gas.

Brussels is now doing its best to ignore the questions that more and more Europeans are now asking every day. The Americans were always worried about and wanted a ban on the construction of the second line of Nord Stream, I remember, they were very worried about the energy independence of the Old World. However, having abandoned cheap Russian gas and replaced it with expensive American “blue” fuel, has resulted in a significant decrease in the standard of living of Europeans, Europe did not gain the coveted energy independence that was so much talked about in Brussels and the capitals of Europea. Of course, Brussels politicians try to talk about this as little as possible, but Europeans see and understand perfectly well that they are now just as dependent on American LNG as they were a couple of years ago on Russian gas.
Moreover, replacing the supplier on which Europe now depends cost European taxpayers tens of billions of euros.

It was also costly for the European economy. The high cost of replacing Russian gas with American gas is especially noticeable in the German economy, which, thanks to the “far-sighted” energy policy of Olaf Scholz and his government, has now slipped into recession and has lost its competitiveness in world markets. The energy situation in German industry is now so difficult that German companies are even moving production to other countries. Preference is given, as you might guess, to the United States, where not only is electricity almost several times cheaper than in Europe and especially in Germany, but it has also adopted a special law to lure European industry to its territory - under the pretext of fighting inflation.
The irony in all of this is of course that Europe not only still buys pipeline gas that I mentioned earlier through the Ukraine transit system and Turkish stream but it also buys large volumes of Russian LNG as supplies are up by 40% with the main buyers being Spain and Belgium.
So the efforts to reject Russia completely have failed and its unlikely they will succeed in the future.