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| 2019 photo of natural gas drill rig in Lancashire - Cuadrilla/PA |
Some people are painting Russia as a big bad villain for invading Ukraine. I think the invasion was an entirely predictable response to our pushing to add Ukraine to NATO. Anyway, Putin has done it and now people are crying for sanctions, like not buying any more natural gas from Russia. In the middle of winter, when Russia supplies something like 30% of Europe's supply.
Now, how is it that Russia got to be such a big supplier of natural gas to Russia? Could it be that they funded environmental groups to protest against anything that would make Europe energy independent? Does that sound like one of those crazy theories about Russia meddling in Western affairs that some people have been pushing?
Michael Shellenberger (Twitter) and Matt Ridley (The Critic) seem to think it's real:
The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.
The Centre for European Studies found that the Russian government has invested $95 million in NGOs campaigning against shale gas. Russia Today television ran endless anti-fracking stories, including one that “frackers are the moral equivalent of paedophiles”. The US Director of National Intelligence stated that “RT runs anti-fracking programming … reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.” Pro-Russian politicians such as Lord Truscott (married to a Russian army colonel’s daughter) made speeches in parliament against fracking.
Makes me wonder if this whole Ukraine debacle was engineered to maximize Russia's profits from natural gas because some guys in the international billionaires club have a big stake in Gazprom*, the Russian natural gas company.
* Gazprom has their own web page, but for some reason it's not loading right now. You don't suppose somebody cut the wire, do you?
Via ZeroHedge
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