Bay 12 Games Forum

This Oct 2020 article:
"Excluding Russia’s gas reserves in Asia, Ukraine today holds the second biggest known gas reserves in Europe. As of late 2019, known Ukrainian reserves amounted to 1.09 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, second only to Norway’s known resources of 1.53 trillion cubic meters. Yet, these enormous reserves of energy remain largely untapped. Today, Ukraine has a low annual reserve usage rate of about 2 percent. Moreover, more active exploration may yield previously undiscovered gas fields, which would further increase the overall volume of Ukraine’s deposits."

Probably, only a portion of this is in the Baltic Sea deposits, but someone where else I'd read that about 40% of their new verified reserves were from the new deposits.

This article refers to the Ukrainian Black Sea rigs that were seized during Crimea by Russia, article.[spoiler]
"It operates a total of 17 deposits offshore the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, including 11 deposits producing natural gas, four producing gas condensate and two deposits producing oil."

A (Reuters article, Feb 2021). That article also refers to Romania switching from coal to natural gas to meet their EU target.

Romania is planning a second gas rig for 2026 according to this politician's statement EurActiv article. That politician is talking about an energy-independent Romania...

The Yamal pipeline was not enough, so Russia/EU built Nord Stream, but that was not enough, so they built Nordstream 2 which finished last year but the certification was frozen this February because of the invasion.

Romania was switching from coal to natural gas, to meet their upcoming EU target (maybe for 2030?). There are about 6 EU countries still using significant coal: Poland, Romania, and 3 or 4 others in that eastern EU area. All of them will switch from coal to natural gas for their EU target, which is why Nord Stream 1 and 2 were built... the Yamal pipeline was not enough for Germany plus the eastern EU countries that were going to switch from coal to gas.

Russia didn't build these pipelines at their own expense, there are contracts that include penalties for breaking the contract and penalties for not delivering the goods and penalties for not buying the delivered goods. Germany planned to use natural gas for at least 30 years in great quantities, partly to replace the coal, partly to buy time to develop the renewable system they envisioned.

The pipeline contracts between EU and Russia are going to have a 20 or 30 year lifespans with overlapping renewal clauses ("in ten years we'll revise the needed amount and pricing for the next ten to twenty years"). If the EU gets another significant gas source (maybe a westernized Ukraine), the EU will be able to force Russia to lower the price and the quantity through competition with Ukraine.

Putin is not really a Russian... he is a Soviet, raised by the USSR, schooled by the USSR, and trained by the USSR. The USSR, as a federal government, had many politicians from member-states who's families had wealth and political control.

Those families in Ukraine controlled who received paying jobs and who did not. Their politics are "if we're going to have a democracy then we'll control who wins through economic starvation and selective job creation, any leader we don't like will have a bad economy". But, old people die and some of their kids have western educations and new-politics. Their western friends propose the idea of reviewing Ukraine's fuels and they find many new deposits. A plan is made to gain political control so they can control who gets the gas profits. Putin knows that political control will be lost and his pro-russia supporters will be subverted by new jobs and new money, so he invades before his militia gets new jobs.

The EU's statistics website shows 2019 that 40% of EU energy comes from burning fossil fuel (here), 60% of that fuel is imported, and that Russia provides 40% of that (more eurostat reports), which means that about 10% of all EU energy was from Russian fossil fuel imports in 2019.

25% of total EU energy comes for about 100 nuclear plants. There are only 2 under construction in the EU.

And a eurostat statement about projected renewable energy usage:
"The share of renewable energy in energy consumption increased continuously between 2004 and 2019, from 9.6 % to 19.7 %. The Europe 2020 target is 20 % by 2020 and the Europe 2030 target is 32 % by 2030."