Golden Rule

 

    I hope you know that the original golden rule is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I expect that you are also familiar with the one portrayed in the picture above (He who has the gold makes the rules). While I like the original and try to follow it (the operative word being "try"), the world in general seems to follow the second.
    I've been musing about the "crisis" in the Ukraine, and I remember hearing a while back about how people were upset because Russia was holding up supplies of Natural Gas to the Ukraine and maybe Eastern Europe. So now I'm thinking maybe I should I revise this second rule to refer to black gold instead of metallic gold.
    Western Civilization runs on oil (and natural gas and coal, all hydrocarbons that come out of the ground). so if you are in the West, golden gold will only do you any good if you can exchange it for black gold. That's why we are having so much trouble with the Mid-East. They've figured this out and are flexing their muscles to see how much power they really have.
    Now Ukraine is a big place, not as big as Russia, but bigger than any other country in Europe, so I'm wondering how come they were having this natural gas problem with Russia. Don't they have any of their own? So I go to Wikipedia and I find these somewhat confusing paragraphs:

Fuel resources

Ukraine produces and processes its own natural gas and petroleum. However, the majority of these commodities are imported (and transited), mostly from Russia. Natural gas is heavily utilised not only in energy production but also by steel and chemical industries of the country, as well as by the district heating sector. In 2012, Shell started exploration drilling for shale gas in Ukraine—a project aimed at the nation's total gas supply independence.
Ukraine has sufficient coal reserves and increases its use in electricity generation.

Power generation

Ukraine is a net energy exporting country (in 2011, 3.3% of electricity produced were exported) but also one of Europe's largest energy consumers. As of 2011, 47.6% of total electricity generation in Ukraine was coming from nuclear power, with the country receiving most of its nuclear fuel from Russia. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, is located in Ukraine. Coal- and gas-fired thermal power station and hydroelectricity are the second and third largest kinds of power generation in the country.

    If I understand this, Ukraine has more than enough power plants, but they don't have the infrastructure in place to keep them fed with locally obtained fuel. Why don't they have the infrastructure? Maybe because they were under the Soviet's thumb for so long.
    Anyway, Russia seems to have recovered more quickly from the Soviet debacle than the Ukraine has. As long as the Ukraine is dependent on Russia for fuel, they are going to be at their mercy. About the only thing they have that they can use to beat the Russians over the head is a jet engine factory. Russia probably has one of their own somewhere, but no self-respecting super-power will want to have just one of a critical component in their military industrial complex.

Update April 2016 corrected typo.