Un artículo del viejo amigo Ambrose, del Telegraph, con opciones de Europa sin gas ruso. Fracking etc
Para los que ven lo de Ucrania como un plan americano, supongo que dirán mas de lo mismo.
Yo lo que veo es un viejo chocho (Putin) humillado y cabreado. Como no le ofrezcan una salida digna del embrollo en que se ha metido tiene todo una pinta horrible. Está convirtiendo a Ucrania en un país con su historia, sus héroes...
En fin.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/01/time-drop-energy-cluster-bomb-kremlin/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhrIt is time to drop an energy cluster bomb on the Kremlin
Cutting off Russian gas supplies puts fracking back on the tableAMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD
Vladimir Putin’s terror tactics and alleged shelling of civilians in Kharkiv with cluster munitions force us to move up the escalation ladder. We should respond with an economic cluster bomb of symmetric ferocity.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says the West should cap imports of Russian gas, oil, and coal, one reason why the Kremlin has singled her out for particular abuse.
The other reason is the under-appreciated and invaluable role of British military forces over recent months in helping to prepare the Ukrainian army for the onslaught. Equally under-appreciated is the UK’s willingness to extend its formidable capability in cyberwarfare deterrence to all of European Nato.
The European Parliament will vote today on a comparable motion targeting energy, with a call to “use all possible gas depositories in order to ensure uninterrupted gas supply to the EU.” That implies fracking.
I suspect that fast-moving events will lead to a total cut-off of every molecule of Russian hydrocarbons. It is no longer tenable for the West to drag this out as the slaughter unfolds: “if not now, when?” said Helima Croft from RBC Capital Markets.
The democracies have the means to muddle through provided we invoke national security powers over energy supply. But be under no illusions, and be wary of triumphalism just five days into the war. Russia has barely begun to deploy its military might.
Fiona Hill, former Russia security guru at the White House, said Putin will retaliate in any way he can. He will not hesitate to bring the whole world crashing down with him, even to the point of nuclear Götterdämmerung. If you think he won’t do it, “yes, he will”, she said.
We are playing strategic poker for exorbitant stakes. The cynical Putin of the past was one thing: the millenarian emotional Putin of today is quite another. Russia remains a full-spectrum commodity superpower with influence over the supply chain for critical minerals as well as energy. We must expect him to exploit that leverage.
However, the calculated gamble is that Moscow’s military and intelligence elites will precipitate a palace coup to stop him, once the price for Russia is high enough. One thing we all learned from his humiliation of the Russian security council - compelling them to dip their hands in Ukrainian blood on television, nolens volens - is how brittle his regime has become.
The sanctions against the Russian central bank agreed last weekend, after markets laughed off the original token measures, are already devastating for the financial system.
Governor Elvira Nabiullina, emerged in funereal black to tell the nation that a large part of the country’s $635bn foreign exchange reserves is henceforth unusable, either for rouble defence or to help banks and companies cover their dollar and euro liabilities.
But crippling the financial system is not enough. Putin can continue day to day operations with a revenue stream from hydrocarbons. Oil accounts for the lion’s share.
Russia’s “heavy” Urals crude is not fully fungible on the global market. The Kremlin cannot easily switch to other buyers. It exports 4.3 million barrels a day (b/d), mostly to Europe.
Much of this is sold to refineries for diesel. It sells Europe a further 1.6m b/d of petroleum products such as aviation and shipping fuel. The US currently absorbs 700,000 b/d of Urals to replace heavy Venezuelan crude in its refineries.
Sanctions against tanker owners and insurers could make Urals crude almost unmovable in Western waters. Russian exports cannot easily be switched to China, even assuming that the Chinese are willing to soak up the diverted barrels, which would amount to political endorsement of an invasion turning into a public relations disaster for the axis of autocracies.
We should not underestimate the havoc caused to the global crude market (100 million b/d) by the sudden loss of Russian barrels. It would be akin to the Opec embargo in 1973.
Washington would have to read the riot act to Saudi Arabia and Gulf petrostates, letting it be known that there will be unpalatable strategic consequences if they continue to withhold crude supplies in a crisis market.
Muddling through would require a temporary 55 mph/ 90 km speed limit across the West, with flight rationing (sorry airlines), and slower shipping speeds.
Oil would probably spike well above $150 but nothing cures high prices like high prices. Demand destruction would do its time-honoured work, as would the recessionary shock. Agile frackers in the Permian Basin would come back fast at triple-digit crude levels. US shale alone could cover a quarter of the Russian loss by the end of the year.
However, Europe has ample capacity for imports of seaborne liquefied natural gas, though not always in the right spot. It can bring in roughly 250 billion cubic metres (bcm), more than total Russian sales to Europe of 155 bcm.
Alan Riley, a professor of energy law at the Atlantic Council, said the US federal government has the power, in extremis, to force its LNG companies to redirect all gas shipments to Europe in a maritime version of the Berlin Airlift.
The UK would play a critical role, rescuing Germany by mobilising its three large LNG plants to pump 20 bcm of gas through two interconnectors across the Channel. The interconnector skirmishing during Brexit seems a distant memory. We are one band of democratic brothers now.
Full mobilisation of global LNG would come close to nullifying Putin’s gas weapon for the rest of this winter. Europe can get by until late April. Several weeks of mild weather and good wind have slowed the depletion rate of inventories enough to avert the worst.
The imperative is to rebuild stocks over the low-demand months. Brussels is pushing for extra storage capacity in each country along the lines of Italy’s strategic gas reserve. The UK has no storage worth the name after closing Rough in 2018. The Government must remedy this weakness immediately.
Germany has shifted gears. The coalition has agreed to build its first two LNG terminals. The Greens - born out of anti-nuclear protest - have signalled that they may let the country keep its last three nuclear reactors open beyond December, and even to delay the phase-out from coal.
The Dutch are keeping the Groningen gas fields going for longer, doubling output this year.
Should the UK lift the fracking moratorium and invoke national security powers to revive drilling this year in the rich Bowland Basin? It is not an easy question. The UK still holds the presidency of COP26. What is needed today may be viewed as a retrograde in five years.
On strict climate grounds, the objections are overstated. The pre-combustion CO2 footprint of British fracked gas is half that of LNG shipped from Texas or Qatar. Methane emissions under strict UK regulation would be orders of magnitude lower than in the Permian, where Texan wildcatters flare and vent gas with abandon.
Given that we will need gas as the decarbonisation bridge fuel to displace coal and buttress wind, a case can be made that home-grown gas from fracking is the cleaner version.
Britain’s fracking saga has been a travesty. Cuadrilla was harassed to death with earthquake limits of 0.5 on the Richter scale. This is far less than tremors created by a normal building site.
The low limit was intended to stop British fracking ever getting off the ground. In America it is 4.0, hundreds of times greater on a logarithmic scale.
Cuadrilla’s Francis Egan said he has been ordered to fill his successful wells with concrete and shut everything down. He could revive the project quickly if the Government were to lift the earthquake ceiling to 1.5 and rush through planning consent for fracking and drilling. “We could be ready to rock and roll with two wells within six months, and another two within 12 months,” he told me.
That would feed usable gas straight into a mains pipeline close by, in time for the coming winter. Mr Egan said he could produce a quarter trillion bcf (billions of cubic feet) from 40 wells based on a single four-acre site.
There is enough gas in the Bowland as a whole to displace UK imports entirely and to plug much of Germany’s gas deficit over the next decade. It would change the map of gas supply in Europe - while ‘levelling up’ with Northern jobs for good measure.
There is a valid argument for letting Cuadrilla, Ineos, and others, give it a go, to see what really lies in the Bowland. If necessary, the Government should put up co-funding, since it has driven away private investors. “I don’t think we would object if the Government took a 50pc stake,” said Mr Egan.
I have not made up my mind but the fracking debate should be reopened. If the German Greens can swallow nuclear reactors for the immediate cause of Western democracy, who can baulk at compromise? We are at war.
