what happened to the großrossiya thread

[I AM MOBIUS]

So all the Republicans in your country can continue to cash in in exactly the same way they've been doing since WWI...

[Elok]

What, on the MI complex? We didn't need a Russia fight for that; we'll likely be dropping bombs on Muslims until everyone on this forum is dead of old age, at this rate.

[I AM MOBIUS]

These people are greedy ****s who just can't help but want to open new markets on the backs of other people's misery...

[I AM MOBIUS]

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/04/23/with-u-s-boots-on-the-ground-in-ukraine-whats-vladimir-putins-next-move/

So, the US sends some 'boots on the ground' and the Russian response is a new military build up and a resumption of shelling (why Oerdin is wrong again)...

This is the **** Republicans like Oerdin are playing with: http://www.history.com/news/history-...ar-close-calls

[N35t0r]

Russia should have helped Saddam's regime while it was being illegally invaded by the US

[Ellestar]

Russia should have helped Saddam's regime while it was being illegally invaded by the US

WHAT? Saddam Hussein was an ally of USA and Britain. Why the hell Russia of all countries should help former NATO ally?
What kind of logic is that?

I think you kinda forgetting history, or something. It's like if USA will invade Saudi Arabia or Japan, and Russia will decide to defend Saudi Arabia or Japan from aggression of USA. Why the hell Russia should do it? It's totally not our business even if USA will decide to invade their former allies.

[The Mad Monk]

Neither european countries.
Finally the idiocy and self serving the american energy strategy and sanctions are costing to europe is becoming clear.

US to launch blitz of gas exports, eyes global energy dominance
The US Energy Department prepares a wave of LNG gas permits in the latest move to redraw the world's oil and gas landscape

Workers exploring a potential shale field in Pennsylvania Photo: AFP
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor, Houston

8:08PM BST 26 Apr 2015

The United States is poised to flood world markets with once-unthinkable quantities of liquefied natural gas as soon as this year, profoundly changing the geo-politics of global energy and posing a major threat to Russian gas dominance in Europe.

"We anticipate becoming big players, and I think we'll have a big impact," said the Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary. "We're going to influence the whole global LNG market."

Mr Moniz said four LNG export terminals are under construction and the first wave of shipments may begin before the end of this year or in early 2016 at the latest.

“Certainly in this decade, there’s a good chance that we will be LNG exporters on the scale of Qatar, which is today’s largest LNG exporter,” he said, speaking on the margins of the IHS CERAWeek energy summit in Texas.

Qatar exports just over 100 billion cubic meters (BCM), though Australia is catching up fast as the offshore Gorgon field comes on stream. It may pull ahead of Qatar later this decade.

Mr Moniz said the surge in US output from shale fracking has already transformed the global market. "We would have been importing a lot of LNG by now. Those cargoes would have gone elsewhere and have in fact had a significant impact in the European market,” he said.

Gas frackers assembled at the world's "energy Davos" in Houston said exports could ultimately be much higher, potentially overtaking Russia as the world's biggest supplier of natural gas of all kinds.

"We're just fifteen years into a 150-year process," said Steve Mueller, head of Southwestern Energy, the fourth biggest producer of gas in the US .

The mile-deep Marcellus basin stretching from West Virginia through Pennsylvania to New York state is driving the explosive growth. Interlocking fractures in the rock make it possible for a single well with advanced technology to extract much more gas than thought possible just five years ago.

Once thought to be in decline, the Marcellus alone produces 113 BCM a year. This is roughly equivalent to Russia's exports to Europe through the Nord Stream, Yamal, and Brotherhood pipelines.

Mr Mueller defiantly sweeps aside those who claim that the US fracking industry is in serious trouble, insisting that drilling costs are coming down so fast that his company - and others - are staying a step ahead of falling prices.

"Rig efficiency was flat for thirty years but since then we've cut by five times. We have set in motion something that you can't deny and is irresistible," he said.

Mr Mueller said it had taken his company 17 days to drill a 2,600 ft well as recently as 2007. It has just drilled a 5,400 ft well in six days. "The new technology is amazing. We have a drill-bit with a chip inside that makes its own changes," he said.

He is continuing to invest heavily and hopes to boost output by up to 10pc annually for the next three years, despite a drop in gas prices to around $2.60 per million British thermal units (BTU). "If it stays around $3, we'll be fine," he said.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects gas prices to rise to $4.88 in real terms by 2020, and $7.85 by 2040.

What is remarkable is that US drillers can produce a third more natural gas today with 280 rigs than they did in 2009 with 1,200 rigs. Total shale output has soared to over 350 BCM from almost nothing a decade ago. It now makes up half of US gas production.

The Obama administration has so far been slow to approve new export terminals for LNG, partly because of concerns that the US would lose its massive advantage in energy and feedstock costs for industry.

Gas sells at for $7 in Europe, and over $10 in North-East Asia, four times more expensive. This cost-gap has been a key driver behind America's so-called "manufacturing renaissance", stoking an investment boom in chemicals, plastics, and glass, and saving the country's steel mills from slow death.

A corridor from Houston to New Orleans has attracted 33 petrochemical plants worth over $1bn each since 2011. The American Chemistry Council expects over $130 billion of industrial projects along this stretch by 2023.

The administration has concluded that the US lead is now so entrenched that there is little to lose from a partial levelling of the global playing field. The expense of freezing gas for liquefaction to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit and shipping it across the Atlantic or Pacific in molybdenum-hulled vessels is enough to maintain a big cost advantage for US manufacturers.

Four LNG terminals with a combined export capacity of 70 BCM are likely to be approved soon by the Energy Department. The front-runner is Cherniere's $18bn terminal at Sabine Pass in Louisiana.

Experts are split over whether North America really can become the world's dominant LNG player. Moody's warned earlier this month that most of the 30 gas liquefaction projects planned in the US and Canada will never get off the ground, chiefly due to the linkage between LNG contracts and the price of crude. "The drop in international oil prices has wiped out the price advantage US LNG projects," it said.

Michael Smith, head of Freeport LNG, said his company will press ahead regardless with plans for a $13bn plant near Houston, and predicted that the US could soon leap-frog all rivals to become the new gas hegemon. "Our projects are very competitive and we will continue to have an advantage over the rest of the world," he said.

Russian president Vladimir Putin warned at the St Petersburg economic summit last year that US shale gas was abruptly changing the international order, with serious implications for his country. The early effects have forced down global LNG prices, creating a rival source of gas supply in Europe.

Any future American cargoes would further erode Gazprom's pricing power in Europe, and erode the Kremlin's political leverage. The EU already has a large network of import terminals for LNG.

Lithuania has just finished its "Independence" terminal, opening up the Baltic states to LNG. Poland's new terminal should be ready this year.

America's parallel drive for shale oil is equally breath-taking. Scott Sheffield, head of Pioneer Natural Resources, said his company has discovered huge reserves in the vast Permian Basin of West Texas.

"We think the Permian could produce 5-6m barrels a day (b/d) in the long-term," he said. It is a staggering claim. This would be more than Saudi Arabia's giant Ghawar field, the biggest in the world.

Ryan Lance, head of ConocoPhillips, said North American oil output could reach 15m b/d by 2020 and 25m b/d over the next quarter century, three times Saudi Arabia's current exports.

A vault forward on this scale would establish the US as the leading energy superpower in both oil and gas, a revival that almost nobody could have imagined seven years ago when the United States was in near panic over its exorbitant dependency of imported fuel. It would restore the US to its mid-20th Century position as a surplus trading nation, and perhaps ultimately as world's biggest external creditor once again.

Fracking is still an almost exclusive preserve of North America, and is likely to remain so into the early 2020s. China has large ambitions but the volumes are still tiny, and there is a shortage of water in key areas. Fracking remains mere talk in most other regions of the world.

Lukoil analysts say Russian extraction costs for shale are four times higher that those of US wildcat drillers. Sanctions currently prevent the Russians importing the know-how and technology to tap its vast Bazhenov basin at a viable cost.

John Hess, the founder of Hess Corporation, said it takes a unique confluence of circumstances to pull off a fracking revolution: landowner rights over sub-soil minerals, a pipeline infrastructure, the right taxes and regulations, and good rock. “We haven’t seen those stars align yet,” he said.

Above all it requires the acquiescence of the people. "It takes a thousand trucks going in and out to launch a (drilling) spud. Not every neighbourhood wants that," he said.

Certainly not in Sussex, Burgundy, or Bavaria.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11563761/US-to-launch-blitz-of-gas-exports-eyes-global-energy-dominance.html

Looks like the American energy strategy is going to cost less for Europe than the Russian energy strategy fairly shortly.

[Dinner]

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debat...ins-next-move/

So, the US sends some 'boots on the ground' and the Russian response is a new military build up and a resumption of shelling (why Oerdin is wrong again)...

This is the **** Republicans like Oerdin are playing with: http://www.history.com/news/history-...ar-close-calls

MOBIUS is wrong yet again. No surprise there. The US sent some men to help train the Ukrainian recruits in military tactics and I even posted a BBC link about it.

Seriously, man, why do you have your head so far up your own backside?

[Dinner]

Mad Monk the weak spot in the chain is a severe shortage of ships equipped to carry LNG. Yes, the terminals and the liquification facilities are starting to come along bit there are also thousands of specialty ships which will need to be built.

[The Mad Monk]

GasLog, whose shares closed up 4% Wednesday on news of the merger, charters 15 LNG carriers to BG and a further two to Shell, from a total fleet of 27 carriers. Mr. Wogan said the current global order book for LNG vessels is around 150 vessels but he expects another 150 to be ordered by 2020 as more gas will come on line from projects mainly in Australia and the U.S.

Exxon Mobil Corp. estimates that the global trade in liquefied natural gas will more than triple through 2040, to nearly 100 billion cubic feet a day—roughly 40% higher than current U.S. gas output. The company projects that countries throughout Asia and the Pacific will import half of the gas they consume by 2040, with LNG making up 80% of imports.

The U.S. will start exporting LNG cargoes at the beginning of next year, when the expanded Panama Canal will allow access to giant LNG carriers for the first time, facilitating U.S. shipments to Asia. Australia is ramping up its production and likely will become the world’s biggest LNG exporter by 2020, according to industry experts. Shell and BG are currently involved in five LNG projects in Australia and three in the U.S.

Build it and they will come.

[Dinner]

I agree it is a good thing, especially if it displaces the use of coal, but it will take time. Decades even. In the mean time I would love to see all of the US adopt California's 50% goal for clean energy (we are al ready at 30%). Once you team that up with hydro and nuclear then that takes a huge amount of carbon pollution out of the economy.

[The Mad Monk]

I've no doubt it will. There is a saying among corporate regulatory and safety officers: "As goes California, so goes the Nation".

[Dinner]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/27/audi-samples-diesel-made-directly-from-carbon-dioxide/

Probably not cost effective but the Germans have come up with a system to create diesel fuel out of air. It requires very high temperatures and pressures but it can be done and possibly points the way to a more carbon neutral future. The waste heat could be used to power city wide central heating, a desalination plant, or any other process which requires high heat. The main downside is it would probably be powered by natural gas which means it would produce more carbon then it offsets but who knows what the future might hold?

[regexcellent]

double post

[regexcellent]

MOBIUS is wrong yet again. No surprise there. The US sent some men to help train the Ukrainian recruits in military tactics and I even posted a BBC link about it.

Seriously, man, why do you have your head so far up your own backside?

And we've been doing this for ~20 years, it's not new.

Re: LNG, there's a new big terminal opening up in Maryland to export Pennsylvania shale gas, Lithuania opened up a terminal a few months ago, and Estonia and Finland are following suit. The days of Russian dominance of the gas market are numbered.

As for the ships, they're easier to build than the terminals.

e: also natural gas is much much much cleaner than coal or oil so we win environmentally regardless.