Posted on 03/24/2024 3:44:39 PM PDT by hardspunned
European countries are starting to produce their own, weaning themselves from imports.
Sure, but it is *very* belatedly and they’re having to fight off the Greens to do it. It will be literal years before they can get even half their industries powered off local resources instead of Russian gas.
A lot of them have extremely quietly started looking into nuclear power and hydrogen.
I have an energy info feed in my e-mail that says that hope for a cease fire in Israel and hope that Ukraine stops bombing refineries has caused the prices to drop, but there’s a lot of bullish pressure. Makes even less sense than the fact that prices are dropping. Hope? And both of those hopes have been dashed on the rocks of reality. But I’ve just lost a heap of money (for me) betting that natural gas would rise.
In fact, hitting refineries should not decrease crude exports. It should increase them, because either the oil has to go somewhere else than a refinery, or you have to shut down wells. The latter is a very poor option.
However... At present the crude oil market seems to be pricing in expected Ukie attacks on crude oil export infrastructure. But the Ukies have not hit such, presumably on the basis that refined products are where the bigger profits are.
The Ukies could well point out the above, and that the target list is VERY long, before they'd need to consider hitting crude oil infrastructure. Or they could bargain for, say, Taurus missiles, or better yet, capabilities to take down and keep taken down that bridge of Pooty's, in return for holding off on crude oil infrastructure. The purpose in hitting the refineries is to not only undercut Russia's war financing, it is to make Russia spread their air defenses so thinly as to render them ineffective, or go broke trying to protect so many targets. If there are enough alternative targets, there's not a big need to hit crude oil facilities.
The real crunch is that the gasoline and diesel markets are also fungible, subject to transport capacity and refinery capacity limitations or lack(s) thereof, governmental actions, and so on. That gets pretty complicated, but in general a lack of gasoline and diesel supply, wherever caused, will tend to increase prices in more-or-less free markets. The still operating refiners get to make a killing.
Of course if Biden had not sold his soul to the greenies, the markets, given time, would take care of the supply problem, much to the benefit of the Ukies.
Politico is saying the western and Ukrainian propoganda before the war that they could defeat Russia was never possible. ZelensGay regime on verge of collaspe.
Shovels and chips from washing machines... it is the west running out of war reserves.
Russia has 400k in Ukraine, 500k in reserve, and 1m reserves and volunteers. Also training 300k every 6 months.
France is now worried about security for the Olympics due to ISIS-X. Macron has increased his personal security detail and he is worried something might happen to him.
Britan out of storm shadow missiles.
Looks like Ukraine is trying to convince the civilians they can beat Russia....
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