Forces of the Bundeswehr, the mountain rescue service and the police clear a snow covered roof in Wolfratshausen, Germany, 2019.
Pepe Escobar –Strategic Review Nov 17, 2021
A “perfect storm of Russian aggression during the coming winter months” is all but inevitable. Watch it on your screens while you properly freeze.
As much as with “brain dead” NATO (copyright Emmanuel Macron) no one ever lost precious assets betting on the incompetence, narrow-mindedness and cowardice of political “leaders” across the Atlanticist EU.
There are two main reasons for the latest German legalese gambit of suspending the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
- Retaliation, directly against Belarus and Russia, “guilty” of the disgraceful refugee drama at the Poland-Belarus border.
- Politicking by the German Greens.
A high-ranking European energy executive told me, “this a game where Germany does not hold a winning hand. Gazprom is very professional. But imagine if Gazprom decided to deliberately slow down their deliveries of natural gas. It could go up tenfold, collapsing the entire EU. Russia has China. But Germany does not have a workable contingency plan.”
This ties up with a proposal that is sitting at a crucial desk in Moscow for approval for two years now, as I reported at the time: an offer by a reputable Western energy firm of $700 billion for Russia to divert their oil and gas exports to China and other Asian customers, away from the EU.
This proposal was actually the key reason for Berlin to resolutely counteract the U.S. drive to stop Nord Stream 2. Yet the torture never stops. Russia now faces an additional hurdle: a carbon tax on exports to the EU which include steel, cement and electricity. That may well be extended to oil and natural gas.
Every sentient being across the EU knows that Nord Stream 2 is the easiest path to lower natural gas prices across Europe, and not the EU’s blind neoliberal bet of buying short term in the spot market.
“They are going to freeze”
Seems like the Bundesnetzagentur, the German energy regulator, woke up from a deep slumber just to find out that the Swiss-based company Nord Stream 2 AG did not meet the conditions to be an “independent transmissions operator” and could be certified only if it was “organized in a legal form under German law.”
The fact that neither the Germans nor the Swiss company were aware of it during the long, previous, always turbulent stages is very hard to believe. So now it looks like Nord Stream 2 AG will have to establish a subsidiary under German law only for the German section of the gas pipeline.
As it stands, the company is not “in a position” to comment on details and especially “the timing of the start of the pipeline operations.”
Nord Stream 2 AG will have to transfer capital and personnel to this new subsidiary, which will then have to present a full set of documentation for certification all over again.
Translation: gas from Nord Stream 2 will be absent during the coming winter in Europe and the pipeline, at best, might start running only by mid-2022.
And that certainly ties in with the politicking angle, as the German regulators are de facto waiting for the new German ruling coalition to emerge, including the neoliberal Greens who are viscerally anti-Nord Stream and anti-Russia.
The European energy executive did not mince his words on a quite possible scenario: “If Germany does not obtain their oil and natural gas by land now they cannot fashion a fall back position, as there is not sufficient LNG capacity or oil for that matter to supply the EU this winter. They are going to freeze. Much of their economy will be forced to shut down. Unemployment will soar. It would take four years to build up LNG capacity for natural gas but who will build it for them?”
Germany has zero margin of maneuver to dictate conditions to Gazprom and Russia. The gas that Gazprom won’t sell to northern Europe will be sold to eastern and southern Europe via Turk Stream, and most of all to Asian clients, which do not engage in blackmail and pay much better than the Europeans.
What is also clear is that if by a misguided political decision Nord Stream 2 gas is eventually blocked, the fines to be collected by Gazprom from the European consortium that begged for the construction of the pipeline may exceed 200 billion euros. The consortium is made up of Engie, Shell, Uniper, Wintershall Dea and OMV.
It’s against this background that the offer on the table in Moscow becomes even more than a game-changer. The bold recommendation to the Kremlin – with financing already in place – is that Russia’s natural resources including oil and natural gas should be redirected to China, as part of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
The proposal argues that Russia needs no trade with the EU, as China is way ahead of them in most advanced technologies. That certainly provides Moscow with the upper hand in any negotiations with any German government. As I mentioned it to the European energy executive, his terse comment was, “I doubt they will desire to commit suicide.”
It’s all Putin’s fault
It would be too much to expect from German and EU politicians the clear-sightedness of the government of Serbia, which is considering importing 3 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually for 10 years. Gazprom has been on the record for years demonstrating the practical, reliable and cost-conscious aspects of long-term contracts.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, commenting on the migrant crisis at the Poland-Belarus border, noted how “Poland behaves outrageously, while the leadership in Brussels applies double standards that are so apparent and naked that they can’t fail to understand that they are embarrassing themselves.”
The case of Nord Stream 2 adds extra layers to EU self- embarrassment as it concerns the wellbeing of populations already living inside Fortress Europe. Let them freeze, indeed – or pay virtual fortunes for natural gas that should be readily available.
As we all know, Germany, Nord Stream 2, Ukraine, Belarus, it’s all interlinked. And according to a Ukrainian lunatic profiting from an Atlanticist platform, it’s all Putin’s fault – guilty of conducting hybrid war against the EU.
It will be up to the “resolve of Poland and Lithuania” to “counter the Kremlin threat”. The ideal framework in this case should be the Lublin Triangle – which unites Poland and Lithuania with Ukraine. These are the lineaments of the new Iron Curtain, erected by the Atlanticists, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, to “isolate” Russia. Predictably, German Atlanticists are a crucial part of the package.
Of course, to be successful, these actors should “also seek greater U.S. and UK engagement”, with every movement complementing “the role of NATO as the ultimate guarantor of peace in the region”.
So behold, EU mortals: a “perfect storm of Russian aggression during the coming winter months” is all but inevitable. Watch it on your screens while you properly freeze.
I read recently the US told Germany to refuse gas from Russia, shortly after which some German minister responded by refusing to grant a certificate of operability to Nord Stream II.
Good article, & as I’ve said on here many times, Putin should just turn off the gas. But as stated above, the Germans are going to do it for Putin.
The UK regime claims that it gets 3% of its gas from Russia. This is a lie. The UK gets over 17% of its gas from Russia. It doesn’t matter one jot if the EU & UK can source LNG from elsewhere, the price will go through the roof.
As Boris has said at least twice: “Screw business”. This anti-business virus appears to be highly infectious. The UK & US are infected, & now the EU has it. We are slipping into a war footing,
I bet anyone who is anyone in the German Greens will be a CIA asset, the same for most Western European politicians. Did Merkel perform so badly so the Greens could hold power? Is Boris performing badly for the same purpose? Is Biden doing the same, because he won’t run for a 2nd term. I hope the German sheeple enjoy their €200 billion bill.
Here’s all the proof you need:
And that certainly ties in with the politicking angle, as the German regulators are de facto waiting for the new German ruling coalition to emerge, including the neoliberal Greens who are viscerally anti-Nord Stream and anti-Russia.
Who is behind these ‘greens’? Soros, CIA, etc. and all of their controlled toadies.
R.C.
germany needs more african + islamic
parasites , more money depts to rothschild,
les employment, more green WEF +
ATLANTIC BRIDGE+ bilderberg parasites,
les russian gas, more islamic/CIA terror,
more jews occupying land, more land to
moslems for ever ! NO KIDDING
The Bolshevik Ashkenazi Khazar Satanists who rule America are behind all of these problems with NS2. WHY can not the German people understand that JEWS will cause them to be very cold, or very poor this winter?? I hope Vlad the Bad plays a good game of hardball with these Khazar Satanists.
Russia has been slowly but surely increasing its supply of natural gas to Germany and other EU nations. Gazprom now has about 1/3 of the world market for natural gas. The efforts mainly from the US to stop the flow to the EU is motivated by the designs of their own energy sector with fracking operations all over the place and expensive shipping costs. On thing we can trust in all of this is that none of our Western news sources are accurate or reliable. The US would like nothing better than for Russia to raise its prices or to cause some incident on strain on relations to shut off the Russian tap.
Too bad we do not have ay reliable information from Russia as well regarding any harms from the Sputnik vaccines, and whether like the Western ones they are equally ineffective.
Hmm.. As far as I can see ?? Is that if you play stupid with the Russian Bear & the Chinese Dragon, you will never be the winner ? They will beat you at this game ..
I thought we invented woolly jumpers once.
Fred B: If Russia turns off the gas, it won’t just get cold, business will stop. The US will never be able to satisfy demand. This is a race to the bottom. The NWO expects Russia to collapse before the West does, or WW3.
You’ve got to look at the back story. Both the US and UK are bankrupt. They can print, but they are bust. Going on OFFICIAL data, the UK has an annualised rate of inflation at over 13%!! The real rate is far higher. I realise the regime doesn’t give a XXXX about the sheeple, but there are going to be terrible times ahead. The Bank of England is a juggler about to drop the balls. It is the same in the US. Even if you fantasise & imagine the US and UK are reset to a sound economic model, they are still going to fail, because there are no opportunities for the US/UK. The EU could survive, because they are planned economies, so much more stable, but they are still ruled by legacy WW2 elites, so these EU elites would rather sink their ship than let US/UK sink on their own…. we’re all in it together, so to speak.
In a rational world, the EU would abandon their Atlantasist position and realign with Russia and China. There’s nothing bad about this because the US/UK want to be the top dogs, they have . There’s no compromise here. Between the two of them (now one), they’ve been the global power for over 400 years. They are not going to give it up.
As Putin says: “I can’t imagine a world without Russia.” The City & Wall Street can’t imagine a world that they don’t control. There are no negotiations here, this is last man standing stuff.