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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

As much as I am wary about Russian influence (we were under their yoke 1948-1989, with an outright invasion in 1968), Gazprom never fooled around with gas deliveries into Western Europe.

They know that they need to maintain spotless business reputation, precisely because Europe is already on the fence re doing any business with Russia at all and because gas exports are the most reliable source of hard currency for Russia.

Turning gas off is a nuclear option for Kremlin. Not unthinkable, but very extreme.

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I agree that turning off the gas completely would be extreme, but it doesn't have to be "turning off the gas", it can just be meddling with the gas prices, specifically as a lever against potential sanctions (Europe will be less likely to sanction Russia if Russia can retaliate where Europe is weakest).

Oh yes, that is very possible. OPEC 2.0.

It's also pretty easy to build storage facilities so they have to turn the gas off for a long time before the effects are felt. Storage of LPG for an entire winters use by a country isn't super expensive.

Technically yes, NIMBYs might be a problem.

As far as I can tell, Europe has storage facilities but they let Gazprom run a lot of them and for some reason Gazprom has let them run down rather than refilling them like they usually would over the summer...

A theory I heard was that all the gas was bought up by speculators (that seems true, actually) and now they're slowly delivering the gas as needed to avoid speculators eating all the cheap gas up and then blaming Gazprom once no gas is left for the winter.

> Gazprom never fooled around with gas deliveries into Western Europe.

Well they're doing it right now.

Natural gas flows at the westernmost point of the Yamal pipeline — a strategically important 2,000-kilometer pipeline that runs across four countries: Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany — dropped to 20 million cubic meters per day in mid-August, [...] a sharp fall from its typical rate of 81 mcm per day.

What’s more, European piped natural gas supply from Russia is expected to slip even further in September. [1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/russia-is-pumping-less-natur...

> Turning gas off is a nuclear option for Kremlin

The Kremlin is as dependent on that $$$ as Germany is on gas, perhaps even more so. They won't dream of screwing their largest client, and one of the most important trading partners. If Germany was desperate for energy it wouldn't be engaging in super expensive "green" energy boondoggles and it'd be building up baseline nuclear capacity. They _easily_ have the engineering to do it, and the operational capability to run it safely. The fact that they are not doing this is quite telling - they too do not believe the Kremlin would be prepared to blow off its feet with a Gatling gun like that. If anything a trade partnership like that only makes Europe more stable, and any political or military shenanigans would be less likely to occur. Crucially it'd also strengthen the ties between the two countries, which is something the US does not want to see, because then the US sanctions would be only good for wiping one's ass with. Can't have that.

Full disclosure: Russian-American, but not a fan of Putin.

Mostly agreed, but regarding _easily_ having the engineering to do anything nuclear I doubt it. That was in the past. Nothing much new (nuclear) got built recently. And not by Siemens anyways, they maybe do some substation and turbine stuff, but that's it. The other thing is... all the stuff getting built in Sibiria, pointing east, and south east. Into China, partially existing already. Proposals to expand that into India. And to bridge the gaps to the other already existing stuff pointing west, into Europe. Given a few years and much investment into infrastructure one could imagine them simply switching the lever to whereever it makes more sense for them.

Well, maybe "easily" was an exaggeration, but Germany is home to some of the bleeding edge particle physics installations, and some of the world's leading scientific institutions, so at least the science side should be pretty solid. For engineering I'm sure Siemens would make things happen if a large enough pallet of cash is offered to it. With some pressure, it could even produce newer designs that are cheaper if built in quantity, than the purportedly "green" alternatives that do not provide baseline load capacity. The only real issue that's getting in the way is public opinion - the soil has been salted quite thoroughly on that, as far as I understand. But that'll change once a few people freeze to death.

Having known parts of Siemens by having to deal with them in the past, I doubt it. We have a saying here: "Siemens ist 'ne Bank mit angeschlossener Elektroabateilung" which translates into something like "Siemens is a bank with electric department". That covers some of it, but they are more like an arrogant and snobbish government institution and have the same inertia.

Because of that I'd rather count on small modular reactors from whomever, or even fusion by some startup, not via ITER, or Wendelstein-X.

It's not just the risk of the strategically turning it off. It's also creating a dependence and giving Putin money. Those are bad by themselves.

I'm not in favor of giving Putin money, but I am in favor of dependencies. Dependencies are what keep people from invading each other's countries when there's trouble. People are unlikely to start bombing their customers.

I take your point and I sort of agree, but I'm really excited for how the transition to clean energy will reduce the Kremlin's influence. Even without exporting so much energy, I suspect/hope Russia's remaining economy will still be too dependent on exports to risk attacking anyone (especially considering that China et al would probably strongly oppose an attack on its most lucrative clientelle, however much it might otherwise detest them).

I suspect/hope Russia's remaining economy will still be too dependent on exports to risk attacking anyone

Why would Russia attack anyone? What would be the point of such an attack?

Why US is allowed to attack anyone, destroys whole countries and kill millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of civilians and everybody is ok with it (recent examples: Libya, Afghanistan, Syria)?

> Why would Russia attack anyone? What would be the point of such an attack?

I was responding to the GP's hypothetical.

> Why US is allowed to attack anyone, destroys whole countries and kill millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of civilians and everybody is ok with it (recent examples: Libya, Afghanistan, Syria)?

If you can rephrase this so it doesn't sound like overt flame bait, I might respond. Otherwise we risk a flame war and I don't have energy for that.

The trouble with Nord Stream 2 is that it removes the dependencies which keep Russia from invading Eastern European countries like Poland by creating a route to sell gas to the richer parts of Europe that doesn't go through them, whilst also creating a dependency that would make it painful for the rest of Europe to take action if Russia did such a thing. This is probably not good for peace in Europe.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I'm obviously a bit late with this, but I wanted to add that I'm not sure how much of a deterrent gas routes through other countries were for Russia to begin with, e.g., it did not seem to help Ukraine much.

Dependencies run in both directions. Russia is very dependent on its fossil fuel exports.

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