While the Western world keeps demonising Vladimir Putin and now even Russians, a stark reality that has emerged is how badly they are dependent upon Russian energy exports, and how their overt, boastful attempts to put up a farce of token solidarity with Ukraine is only an attempt to divert the attention of the public from their own failures.
A video clip of the former USA President Donald Trump is going viral for weeks now since the news of Russian troops preparing to invade Ukraine emerged.
In the clip, Trump is accusing Germany, a major NATO country of being badly dependent on Russian energy exports.
I know CNN & MSNBC never aired this, so I figured I would. Spot on, don't you think? pic.twitter.com/6V1vRKxP8p
— Justin Pulitzer 🍊 (@JustinPulitzer) February 24, 2022
In this video, Trump says, “It is very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia. We are supposed to be guarding against Russia, we are spending millions of dollars to protect France, Germany (NATO countries) against Russia and here they are, pouring millions of dollars into the coffers of Russia, making pipeline deals. it is very inappropriate, A former chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that is supplying the gas.”
Trump adds further, “Ultimately Germany will have over 70% of their country controlled by Russia. It should have never been allowed to happen. You tell me if that is appropriate. It is very bad for NATO”. He goes on to assert how the US share of spending is higher than other NATO members, but that is another discussion.
US depends on Russian oil and gas exports too, hence they left out ‘energy’ sector from sanctions
Earlier last week, when USA and Germany, UK etc were starting to declare they are super angry with Vladimir Putin and wanted to show the world that they care very much for Ukraine, they announced a series of sanctions, aimed at damaging Russia economically.
However, the US government explicitly stated that they are not touching the energy sector, that is, they are doing nothing that will affect the energy imports from Russia in any way. The entire energy sector, with broad inclusions of even wood, had been left untouched, safe from sanctions.
“Our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world”, announced the Biden administration’s Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh last week.
Biden’s Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh:
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 24, 2022
"Our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world." pic.twitter.com/YGTFcGrtLT
The White House order announcing sanctions had explicitly stated that energy will be exempt from sanctions.
There is a reason why US has not touched energy imports in its sanctions against Russia. They cannot, not without pluging their own citizens into a serious energy crisis. In the last few years, the US has grown only more and more dependent on Russian oil and gas.
While the Democrats in USA kept accusing Trump of being Putin’s puppet, the reality is that since Biden took oath, the USA’s dependency on oil and gas imports from Russia has only increased.
As per reports, the USA purchased over 600,000 barrels of Russian oil and petroleum products PER DAY in 2021. That was 24% higher than 2020. In 2021, 21% of all gasoline imports of the USA came from Russia. Basically, while Biden keeps making big statements about how Russia and Vladimir Putin are everyone’s enemy, his country keeps paying the so-called enemy billions of dollars every month.
UPDATED 3: The White House, in call with reporters tonight, made very clear that it's actively making sure that the SWIFT move against Russia does NOT impact energy payments, using two potential paths | #OOTT #ONGT #Ukraine
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) February 26, 2022
The below is from Biden administration senior official pic.twitter.com/W6n2bkGKgH
Europe’s energy dependency on Russia
Europe gets over 40% of its oil and gas from Russia. Germany is one of the countries where the energy dependency is at its worst. While big sanctions and big statements of condemnation were announced by leaders in Europe and USA against Russia, they have made sure that Russian oil and gas continues to flow into their countries.
Even the move to cut off Russian banks from the SWIFT system has come with a lot of conditions and careful exemption of ‘energy’ related payments.
A Russian energy embargo would cause massive energy shortages in Europe, leading to blackouts and a deep recession. It would cause global oil prices to perhaps double.
— John Arnold (@JohnArnoldFndtn) February 26, 2022
As much as the world is mad at Putin, that is not a price the West is willing to pay.
Even after announcing sanctions and hyperventilating against Russia, Germany has actually bought more oil and gas from Russia in the last few days. Russian energy giant Gazprom has stated that despite the so-called sanctions, gas exports from Russia to Europe, via pipelines that run through Ukraine, are functional and continuing, unaffected.
In 2021, Russia got more than 100 billion USD from Europe by selling oil and gas. Though Germany has announced a token measure of ‘suspending’ the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, for now, the fact remains that Germany gets more than half of its gas from Russia alone. Nord Stream 2 is not supplying gas yet, so the ‘suspension’ doesnt actually hurt Germany’s gas imports.
How and why did US and Europe become so dependent on Russian oil and gas
The reason why the USA and Europe have become so dependent on Russian gas is mainly because they stopped being self-reliant, and especially because they became the devotees of a new religion called climate activism.
Over the years, riding on a wave of fanaticism called ‘climate activism’, the Western nations have shut down their nuclear power plants, and increased dependency on ‘renewables’ like wind and solar power. The delusions of having a ‘green energy’ revolution were so intense they they closed down gas fields, decommissioned nuclear power plants (NPPs) and even rejected the new methods of extracting natural gas.
When Joe Biden came to power, his very first move was to shut down the Key Stone XL pipeline project. Climate activists like Greta Thunberg, John Kerry and many ‘woke’ politicians in Western countries have led them to believe that they can fulfill their energy needs through wind and solar, that they do not need nuclear power, that nuclear power, that is the cleanest, most effective means to produce energy, is actually ‘extremely dangerous’, and have shut down projects involving natural gas.
Author Michael Shellenberger has pointed out often how shutting down nuclear plants and rejecting energy-intense sources like natural gas, countries have spiralled down into the path of unreliable, inconsistent and low-output solutions like wind and solar.
In a recent article, Shellenberger wrote, “At the turn of the millennium, Germany’s electricity was around 30 percent nuclear-powered. But Germany has been sacking its reliable, inexpensive nuclear plants… By 2020, Germany had reduced its nuclear share from 30 percent to 11 percent. Then, on the last day of 2021, Germany shut down half of its remaining six nuclear reactors. The other three are slated for shutdown at the end of this year. (Compare this to nextdoor France, which fulfills 70 percent of its electricity needs with carbon-free nuclear plants.)”
On the contrary, as Shellenberger pointed out, Putin has been focusing on expanding nuclear energy projects, and producing more and more oil and gas. As a result, while Russia fulfills a significant part of its domestic energey needs through nuclear power plants, it has a lot of oil and natural gas left to export to Europe and the USA.
Yes, though Greta cannot be directly linked to the German onslaught on its own NPPs, because that started under Angela Merkel around 2011, when she was 8, the way the climate activist’s theatrics of “How dare you” and “blah blah blah” have been lapped up, hailed, deified and celebrated by the Western media and their policymakers is a good indicator of why their energy policies have ended up laying them at the mercy of Russian exports.
And yet, as recetly as July 2021, Germany and 4 other EU countries had opposed to classifying nuclear energy as ‘green’. Spain, Austria, Denmark and Luxemberg were the other four.
Climate activists would like everyone to believe that it is entirely possible to fulful energy demands though wind and solar, but it is far from the truth. Renewables like wind and solar are low output, require vast lands and prone to weather patterns. There are other downsides too, like recycling costs, carbon footprint and inconsistency in production and supply.
The cost of energy dependency
Russia’s military operation in the Ukraine is the jolt that has made the West wake up from its long slumber. Climate politics is a phenomenon that has long been making poorer, developing nations pay dearly for the whims and fancies of Wstern activists. Now that Germany has hastened up to quickly announce they will be building two new LNG terminals and may be not shut down all its remaining NPPs, it is a lesson for the whole world.
Now it is the EU and USA, tomorrow it may be India, Indonesia, China and many others. In a rapidly developing world, energy dependency will shape geopolitics, national security and economy. The dependence on energy is only going to be more and more intensified as we progress, and it is a brutal wake up call for every country, to invest on reliable, efficient sources of energy and ensure that when hostilities emerge, they are not held hostage to another country’s schemes.
The sanctions announced by the USA and European country against Russia come with a lot of exemptions, conditions and even a ‘grace period’. It is notable here that any measures of ‘not depending upon Russian energy exports’ will take years to actually develop the infra and showing results. So the truth is, while they shame other nations like India for not going against Russia, these Western power are still paying billions of dollars to the so-called ‘enemy of the world’. The realities of energy dependency and the stark hypocrisy of western powers somehow gets buried in the noise of sanctimony and hollow solidarity.
