Poor, Poor Dears.

They still didn't learn a thing. 

The White House is planning to “kill” Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 energy project, according to US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, Geoffrey Pyatt. The project in the northern Gydan Peninsula is operated by independent Russian LNG producer Novatek. It will feature three LNG trains, with a total annual production capacity of 19.8 million tons. The first train was launched in July, while the remaining two are scheduled for 2024 and 2025. Speaking on Wednesday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on US national security interests in Ukraine, Pyatt stated: “Last week, for instance, we levelled new sanctions against the Arctic LNG 2, which is Novatek’s flagship project” “Our objective is to kill that project,” he stressed, claiming that the project had been set up with the aim of turning Russia into the world’s largest LNG exporter. According to Pyatt, Russia’s plans are being stifled by sanctions imposed through cooperation between the US and its allies in the G7 and beyond.

In related news, the US also wants to beat Russia on battlefield, crush Russia's economy and, in general, get 404 into NATO. Wonderful! In related news, Biden wants to write Ph.D thesis on Operations' Research and all members of the US Congress are currently applying in Israel's Embassy for enlisting with IDF to fight HAMAS.  

The most fascinating thing here, however, is how the guy with this CV, considering the fact of the third world US "education" of its diplomatic corps, can have an idea about energy and Russia's economy. Get a load of this:

Pyatt was born in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, California, the son of Kedar “Bud” Pyatt, and Mary Mackenzie. He received a bachelor's degree in political studies in 1985 at the University of California, Irvine, and a master's degree in international relations at Yale University in 1987.

As you can see yourself--zero background in anything which involves understanding of larger framework of energy and its impact as a main driver of human civilization. Plus, Pyatt's tenure as an ambassador in 404 can get him being featured in proceedings of the War Crimes Tribunal in Moscow and Donetsk.  You can compare Pyatt's C.V. with that of Alexander Novak (with Novak's industrial and industrial economics degrees), not to mention the background of present Russia's Minister of Energy Nikolai Shulginov and it will provide you with a good insight into why the US is imploding. The answer is very simple--the guy with "degree" in political "studies" or "international relations" even from Ivy League (especially from Ivy League) is on average an ignorant and badly educated hack. That is why, for example, American Diplomacy is an oxymoron, it is also a butt of jokes among serious diplomats around the world. 

So, now the idea that some dude who wouldn't know the difference between Billy Joel and Joule can run anything energy-related, especially on a global level, is preposterous. Even for "killing" something one has to have a professional knowledge of "killing" as a craft and Harvard or Yale "educated" economists and accountants wouldn't do, because they are not taught practical geopolitics, global power balance and real economy. This is precisely how the United States miscalculated with Russia on a level beginning to approach that of Hitler's planners, but at least Wehrmacht knew how to fight. So, good luck, trying to butt heads with Novatek and Russian real economy which grows like crazy. As British Lloyd's learned the hard way, Russia doesn't need Western financial institutions--the fact the wet dreamers in Washington still cannot reconcile themselves to. 

Does Pyatt want to challenge Russia's Northern Fleet? Poor, poor dear.

What Can Be better Than Stealing?

More stealing! LOL, Germany wants to expropriate Russia-owned refineries in Germany. Now, Poland wants the piece of the action too. 

As Poland desperately attempts to restore the flow of Russian gas to the country, its government has ordered Russian Novatek to hand over pipeline infrastructure or face legal action amounting to infrastructure expropriation.  On Friday, a Polish government spokesman told the Associated Press that Russian Novatek Green Energy had been ordered to make its pipelines available to Polish companies and that failure to comply would mean legal action. Invoking crisis management laws, AP cited government spokesperson Piotr Mueller as saying that the fate of Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, “depends on whether this Russian firm, linked to Russia, will cooperate in the proper way …. whether the employees, acting on some instructions, will not be trying to block this process in some way”.

But, wait a minute, it was Poland, if my memory doesn't fail me, who wanted spot-pricing initially, which drove prices through the stratosphere,  and then Poland underscored at every opportunity her independence from Russian totalitarian gas. And now she is desperate. Oh my, such a Polish thing to do. Sure, let Poland cease the pipe-line, see what happens. Polish political top brass should recall a fundamental principle of any war, bet that hot, cold or merely economic. It reads like that: war is a very democratic affair--the enemy also has a say. 

Understanding this fundamental principle seems to escape the minds of EU "elites" and as the result each time they get slapped in the face by Russia they get hysterical and forget, in addition to other forgotten things, that normal governance, same as normal war-fighting, is done based on contingency planning. Russians do contingency planning 24/7 and the results are showing in the last 8 years. Here is another demonstration of spoiled children running Europe into he ground.

Members of the European Union are expected to agree on an embargo of Russian crude oil imports as early as next week, according to officials, in a move that would lay to rest a point of contention among its members. Such a measure has been discussed for weeks—with the United States adding pressure on the group to do its part to stop funding Russia with its payments for oil and gas supplies.The EU will continue to discuss the matter over the weekend, according to the New York Times, with the European Commission set to draft the finalized proposal to submit it to EU ambassadors for approval. Those ambassadors are scheduled to meet on Wednesday of next week, with final approval set to be delivered by the end of the week, anonymous EU officials told the New York Times.

Bloviation on the matters of "if Russia finds alternative buyers" is nothing more than verbal self-medication and PR. PR is the only thing Western "elites" are good at. Real governing and competent foreign policy--not so much. It is hard, one has to study hard, learn a lot and be incorruptible--a very tall order for both D.C. and Brussels. Plus, the news from the fronts in 404 are bad, really bad for NATO.  In fact, it is so bad, that great British mind, a strategist the likes of which world hasn't seen before to rise out of London, and who makes Winston Churchill and Disraeli look like amateurs, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called upon creation of "global NATO" and concluded with this:

The war in Ukraine is our war – it is everyone’s war because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us.

So, quoting Harry Dunne from Dumb and Dumber (love this movie) in relation to this woman: "You know, Liz, just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this...and totally redeem yourself!" Indeed, what other peaks of sheer idiocy will those people summit before they succeed in creating a wonderful mix of Orwellian horror and Idiocracy slap-stick comedy.  Especially UK, who really provides as of lately a bulk of stupefying geopolitical cretinism, while being the nation in precipitous decline on all fronts and being noting more than America's chihuahua who is allowed to bark at guests at the party from master's lap. 

To demonstrate how bad are things for Kiev regime propped up by NATO? Here is Sladkov talking to Hero of Ukraine Evgeny Bova (In Russian).

Bova, a devout Nazi, Commander of the First Battalion of Marines of VSU, finds himself in an unfamiliar territory, that is being taken POW and that is why he still cannot completely grasp the fact that he is now merely an object and possibly some sort of exchange material for Medvedchuk. May be not. Here is yet another American freedom fighter, a former US marine, who went to 404 to fight those nasty Roosskies.

But evidently misunderstood a little bit the meaning of a real war, not some safari of shooting those "sand niggers", because Russian "snow niggers" (as The Saker loves to use such a taxonomy) are a bit different. The name of this guy is Joseph Cancel. A handsome guy, young, with wife and child left behind. What a waste. Can anybody explain to those guys that those Russian subhumans are not Iraqis or Afghan dehkans. Those primitive Rooskies have at their disposal excellent ISR complex and a lot of (and I mean a lot) high precision stand-off weapons, plus excellent artillery, including SMART munitions and other things which the US Armed Forces thought only they have. There is nothing romantic in being blown up by Iskander or be on the receiving end of X-101. I don't even speak about getting acquainted with Krasnopol munitions or being torn apart by Kornet's ATGM. So, now Western mercenaries begin to be killed and captured in wholesale numbers.

But one thing really caught my attention today. It is really disturbing to read because the rate of suicides, even considering a repair mode of any ship, is downright bizarre. 

As her one-year anniversary with the Navy approached last May, Hannah Crisostomo swallowed 196 pain relievers. Her organs shut down. Her brain swelled during multiple seizures and she stopped breathing. She was on life support for eight days, during which time doctors had warned her family that she may never regain normal brain functions. When Crisostomo woke up, she immediately wondered why she was still alive. Her thoughts grew more despairing during the next few weeks in the hospital and then in the Navy’s psychiatric ward. “If they keep me in the Navy, and they put me back in the same situation, I’m going to kill myself,” she recalled thinking, “and I’m going to be successful the next time.” That spring, Crisostomo, an aviation boatswain’s mate handler on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, had been moved to night-shift repair duties. Amid disorganization on the ship during an extensive overhaul, Crisostomo said she was constantly berated for things out of her control.

Read the whole thing, it is both disturbing and stunning. The rate of suicides is atrocious and why? Because they have been forced to do duties on the aircraft carrier which is undergoing overhaul? Yes, these are also military duties, I am sure written in many manuals and many of those duties are not glamorous and involve often physical effort. They also involve dealing with noise, dirt, boredom and repetitiveness. The article, actually, makes a good point:

Smith disagreed when a sailor said living standards on the ship were not “necessarily up to par.” He said that the sailors get to go home most nights and that they were not “sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine might be doing.”

Excellent point. You have a cot, you have three hot square meals a day, snacks and, apart from traditional overhaul work-place risks of trauma, nobody shoots at you, let alone you are not under fire from artillery in some basement without water, heat and food. Try that for a change and see how the attitude will change. Could it be the case of a generation of Americans becoming absolutely soft mentally, entitled and unable to cope with even minor difficulties? This is military service, people, not a summer resort. I think that is precisely the case here, notwithstanding some legitimate complains about improving the department of "reasonable accommodation". So, this is your primer for Friday.

New TU-160 And Other Things.

It is literally NEW, like everything is new in it--from materials, to new engines, to new avionics, to new aggregates. New. Many thought it was impossible to do, well UAC did it. Today brand new TU-160 flew for the first time. 

Meanwhile, what Novatek does in Murmansk on its new gigantic wharf for building off-shore (floating) natural gas liquification plants is immense. 

IBM's big honcho Arvind Krishna expressed doubts that Russia will be able to create own quantum computers. He expressed it in 2020. Today, in 2022 MFTI presented Russia's first five-cubit quantum integral processor (in Russian). I don't doubt Mr. Krishna's competencies as an electrical engineer, I highly doubt his competencies in Russia and her scientific capabilities. In fact, I think he has no clue. He is not the first, nor he is the last one.

Just Yesterday I Posted About It.

Bang, today--another iteration by Tucker and Glenn Greewald of this simple idea, which so much has been written and talked about, especially by Michael Hudson, that "financial capitalism" and system it produces is basically a BS which not only does not produce anything but metastasizes into political instability both internally and abroad. 

The only thing I disagree with is this "Silicon Valley" products, much of them being as virtual as any "financial engineering". Enough to take a look at this news.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics on Thursday commented for the first time on Intel's decision to outsource more of its chipmaking, but declined to talk about any possible partnership with one its key rivals. Intel, one of the few remaining firms that both designs and makes its own chips, said last week it would lean more heavily on outside factories, or foundry manufacturers, and could even licence technology from outside firms.

It is clear the United States is being demolished as an industrial country and, if to follow a rather convincing, albeit not perfect, theory that the United States is merely a vehicle for global finance then it inevitably leads us to a conclusion that the life of the United States as a useful economic vehicle is over and the demolition is in progress. This view, certainly, has its merits. I am sitting here with a bucket of pop-corn waiting to see the sequence of the largest cognitive dissonances in the camp of fanatic libertarians and laissez-faire enthusiasts, primarily from GOP--I do not count Democratic Party as sane political organization--who will have to now try to defend a real economy's demolition by the ideology which is in the foundation of their MO--making money, anyway they can. Again, let's recall that day in 2000. 

This is the start of the US industry being shipped in earnest to China. Do you see those red colors enthusiastically voting "Yea", in fact, they voted it with "fuck, yes". Those are all GOPers, and while outsourcing chipmaking is not China-related, it makes little difference for average Joe or Jane since, in the long run, they are screwed all the same. Right, the idea was: let's remove all those industries elsewhere, while we, in America, will strategize, conceptualize, interface and prioritize(c). 

In other words, do nothing but steal. I know it is almost unfair to use Russia as an example but here is how real economy looks like. This is a gigantic shipyard being built in Murmansk Region by energy giant NOVATEK. The shipyard will produce floating natural gas liquification plants, aka GBS LNG platforms. The scale is massive. 

Or this:

You can see the video (in Russian) here. 15,000 people are building this monster with a dry dock of 415 meters. Considering that the whole thing is also needed for "other" projects which may or may not be of pure LNG nature (wink, wink). Having said all that, here is another picture which gives the impression of an immense scale of the construction.

So, Russia taking the third place in global shipbuilding is not just inevitable but merely a matter of a relatively short time. This also is a cushion, of sorts, if Europe succumbs to US pressure and rejects Nord Stream-2, Russia's LNG will still be much cheaper than any alternative. Rostislav Ishenko recently stated that NS-2 for Russia is now primarily a political matter, rather than economic one, because Russia will do just fine without NS-2, which I happen to agree with, but she shouldn't give up on it for geopolitical reasons. Maybe, but in the end, Russia is not responsible for Europe and if the US manages to shut down NS-2, let Europe live with the consequences. European intransigence is Europe's problem, Russia's future in any case is NOT with Europe in general. But as they say, we'll see about NS-2. Maybe Germany will find a spine at some point of time. If not, to hell with them all in EU. But this was my position for years now, for all my OK awareness of the geopolitical factor, but at some point of time one has to consider pure economic sense.

A Rather Gassy Business.

I am no fan of Boston Globe, the rag which gives a tribune to such shitheads as Scott Gilmore, certainly, can not even pretend to be any reputable publication. Here they come again, spewing a lot of hot gas on the issue of Russian gas, which America bought and is going to eventually resell as its own gas, to Europe which is in dire need for gas, and is ready to accept Russian gas, through gas-pipes of both Turkish Stream and Nord Stream, but enough about gas. 

  

Arrival of Russian gas stirs Ukrainian community

After that a lot of smug self-righteous Bullshit is written in this editorial piece, which is expected from most American so called "journalists", but here is an interesting phrase:

Policy makers have imposed a double standard, rejecting domestic gas over solvable concerns while accepting, with apparently no questions asked, the need for foreign LNG shipments with troubling environmental and human rights implications.

If one discounts a traditional fake concern for "human rights", what is highlighted in yellow is actually a very correct statement. Here we have to abandon loony ignoramuses at Boston Globe and concentrate on the opinions of professionals in the field of hydrocarbons. I am no professional in that but I know a thing or two about SLOCs and its reliability and, what RIA (in Russian) Dmitri Lekukh calls a "transport shoulder". It is a very good piece which, unlike Boston Globe's sappy sentimental crap, should be attentively read and taken into account. The piece has a symptomatic headline: To Rob Europe: Why Second Tanker With Russian LNG Is Allowed Into the USA. Indeed, why? Here is a spread, which is even more interesting against the background of my two-weeks old piece on Russo-Chinese Alliance and Northern Sea Route (NSR), and, of course, China issuing, a week later, her White Book precisely on a huge significance of NSR for China.  

1. As Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak (BTW, the guy who actually worked a lot in real industries, such as metallurgy) points out: he is absolutely not "euphoric" about Russian gas arriving to the US. Since Novatek really doesn't care where  the gas goes as long as Novatek is paid. As he astutely noted: once the gas is sold and resold, the gas molecules remain "Russian" but gas does not. 

2. The issue, however, is in the fact of Russia's brand new immense LNG facility in Yamal changes the picture completely and, no matter how emotional some people in the US become about this fact--Russian LNG is competitive with the US domestically produced gas inside the US. Now we are going to Sabetta and this "transport shoulder". See the maps:

#1. European "shoulder" (for some reason "above" Novaya Zemlya).

#2 Asian "shoulder".

Is it getting "warmer"? Here Lekukh makes a very interesting conclusion: If Russian LNG is competitive inside US on a huge, trans-Atlantic, transport shoulder, what is it going to do to European LNG port facilities which are literally, in a global sense, positioned next to Sabetta. Remember American plans to sell American LNG to Europe? Well, good luck competing with Novatek.  Lekukh, however, goes further and states, and I think he is right, that Americans are no dummies--they know all that. The trick is in globalization of the LNG trade which will make price for American LNG competitive, but also will make already very high energy cost component in European goods, extremely high thus giving US goods an advantage over European ones. 

Here, the factor of Russian gas pipe-lines begins to weight heavily and Europeans know it damn well. It is not enough that French Total SA holds 16% of Novatek shares but even SovComFlot's first ice-class LNG supertanker bears the name of late Total's CEO, tragically killed in the air crash, Christophe de Margerie.  She even carries de Margerie's mustache on her bow. 

In fact, they know it so well, that Germany already issued permissions for Nord Stream-2 pipeline to be laid in her territorial waters. And then we have to take a look at those "European" LNG ports in.... sure--in Eastern Europe, that is in Poland, Lithuania and other US lap dogs of no economic weight or significance but who completely bought into this "diversification" scheme without doing even simplest arithmetic. One has to imagine the faces of their leaders when hearing and seeing the news of Russian LNG being shipped to the United States? Hey, Russian LNG is so competitive that who knows (and somebody knows, I am sure, wink-wink) that Poland and Baltic States eventually will have to buy Russian gas molecules as... an American LNG. Twice the price, of course. As they say "freedom is not free". The smell of failure is really in the air.

The situation is utterly comical and two main geopolitical questions today, especially after massive Russian intelligence delegation meeting with their counterparts in D.C., are this: 

1. Will Russia "play" with the US to allow US enter global LNG Trade and thus giving at least partial competitive edge which may help US to partially re-industrialize her economy. 

2. Will Russia, in the same time, back Europe to a degree needed to not let it lose to the US (and China), which, granted pathetic intellectual level and cowardice of European "elites" is entirely possible. 

These are no bad problems to be faced with. I wrote two weeks ago about Russia's strategic fork. This is one of them. Now imagine this factoring into the larger game with China which has her own 9% stake in Novatek and wants NSR really-really bad. Once these factors are considered one can totally understand why Massachusetts Ukrainian community is so worried and is full of... gas, as they should. In 2019 Ukraine becomes irrelevant in the larger scheme of things and if Trump releases... I am running ahead of myself here, let's just wait and see.    

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