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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

Here's some quick numbers I just googled to understand the big picture.

This pipeline has an annual capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. It's the same capacity as the Nord Stream 1, which is already in operation. If Germany was truly meaning business, they'd stop Nord Stream 1 the moment Russian boots enter Ukrainian territory. But let's leave that aside.

55 billion cubic meters translate to about 0.6 billion MWh. The price today for natural gas Dutch TTF futures is EUR 78/MWh [1] , so that translates in about 40 billion EUR per year. It has been as low as EUR 13 and as high as EUR 165 over the last 2 years. It's quite likely that Russia would make a profit even at the lower range, so the 40 billion EUR/year is pretty much pure profit for them.

[1] https://www.theice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futur...

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> If Germany was truly meaning business, they'd stop Nord Stream 1

If Germany is meaning business, they'd stop buying any gas from Russia. Why would the means how it gets to Germany even matter?

How am I going to heat my house?

Don't know why you got downvoted. All these Americans in this thread can have all the opinions they want. They're not getting screwed by high gas prices right now.

Not everyone in Europe is in a comfortable position where they can care about gas prices more than they care about Russian expansion.

> Not everyone in Europe is in a comfortable position where they can care about gas prices more than they care about Russian expansion.

OTOH, not everyone in Europe is in a comfortable position where they can care about Russian expansion more than they care about heating their home.

Pretty much everyone actually. What is the worst consequence of not being able to pay for the heating? In the very extreme case, which could affect a tiny minority of the poorest people, you get broke, and have to apply for welfare. Maybe you'll have to use electric heating and/or wear warm clothes inside for a while. That's about it - nothing comparable to what Ukrainians have to endure.

It's a global market, we get hit by high gas prices too. Almost half of Europeans gas prices are fuel taxes anyway. Talk your governments into backing off those for a while.

Gas prices are extremely high for Americans this year, also.

But it’s true that Russia isn’t a driving force in that.

Gas/fuel prices are a global commodity, of course the Ukraine conflict will affect Americans, not as much as Europe, but Americans will get a lot of it as well. The middle east is probably loving the influx of income.

Gas in this case means methane, right?

While it’s technically true that there’s shipping of LNG outside of pipelines, my impression is that the market for methane isn’t currently very global.

My point was that the resurgence of economies and cold winters has driven up US methane prices to 2-2.5x where they were a year ago.

I was specifically responding to a commenter implying Americans aren’t experiencing difficulty paying for heating this year.

How much higher are German rates for methane?

I think "extremely high" is quite an overstatement.

You can heat it with solar, wind and democracy.

How is my grandmother going to have a house after EU lets a Russian tank drive over it?

The EU is dependent on RU energy exports. It's that simple.

Noble principles do not heat homes, or feed the hungry.

You are free to construct a dichotomy of tanks rumbling over homes, or homes being deprived of heating during hard winter.... but you will only succeed in illustrating the Nash Equilibrium, and fail to be persuasive otherwise.

Try to look at the big picture.

Europe being dependent on Russia for energy is not a cosmological constant, but a result of multiple political decisions done over decades that are being _slowly_ reconsidered now (nobody is closing the first Nord Stream yet for one)

I’m not sure how this illustrates Nash Equilibrium, nothing stable about this. This is just a hegemonic but declining power (USA), that provided security and stability assurances, which is no longer able to provide those assurances. Putin sees an opportunity to rebuild glory of Russian empire and distract from crushing domestic issues.

heat pump and solar. cheaper and less risky.

a) Solar is not applicable to the Northern Europe. It does not generate heat when it's needed the most (winter).

b) Heat pump (installation, retrofitting existing heat distribution, if at all possible; largest problems might arise with wall mounted radiators since they much larger temperatures to operate) is very costly. Maintenance and running costs not so much.

c) Electricity prices even at the current tarriffs are not cheaper than CNG. This comes from data comparing data on similar volume and insulation buildings using heatpump and CNG heating. That will most likely change in favour of electricity, though its generation from natural gas is really popular around here. d) To change the type of heating from CNG to something else en-masse would require extreme financial, labor and supply expenses.

I'm pro giving up on the Russian CGN because I do not depend on it and I can offset price hikes. But assuming that would not be without major economic and other consequences is a nonsense.

Edit: formatting and a typo.

In in Northern Europe and (c) is not true for new housing stock.

I'm building a house and ran the calculations (two years ago, before gas got expensive) for various forms of heating, and solar PV + heat pump came out the cheapest. We have net-metering but still need to pay "transmission fees" (7c/kWh) for electricity we later consume.

I also considered just using gas for heating in the winter, but the connection fees (installation and ongoing network fees) came out to be much more than the cost of the gas we would actually use.

More informative might be: some price sensitivities around LNG, and how changing supply may affect price.

It would be more informative, but it’s much more difficult to estimate that. If you have a quick way to do it, feel free to add to the conversation.

There are multiple alternative options, land based, as well. NS2 doesn't really change the pricing.

Nordstream 2 has sanctions against it in the US and has for several years now. Work on the pipeline stopped an hour or two before they were signed into law (by the allegedly pro-Russia Trump).

Like Biden always does, he just ignored the bi-partisan sanctions passed by congress because it'll be too late by the time the courts get done (Biden subverting the system to help Russia get what they want)

This is important because Ukraine said quite a while ago that sanctions of Nordstream 2 would go a long way toward preventing war[0]

Meanwhile, the Democrats spent a morning last week waxing eloquent about the evil of the filibuster only to use the filibuster that same day to stop a bi-partisan set of Nordstream 2 sanctions from passing because it was just under the requisite 60 votes.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraine-us-not-too-l...

They show in the news only what they want you to hear. Everything was agreed upon and scheduled long before February, including US,EU,Russia and even Ukraine. Macron was flying all over the world for a reason

If the sanctions were never repealed by the US Congress, the US president has no right to overrule their policy.

This has been in the US Constitution from the beginning of the country and is hardly controversial.

Interestingly, failing to uphold the Constitution and execute the laws passed by congress is serious grounds for impeachment (though it simply will not happen until at least 2023).

[citation needed]

If something were actually bipartisan, surely it would be over the filibuster threshold?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-democrats-slam-cruz-nord...

It was 55 to 44. As some Republicans like Rand Paul always vote against sanctions, there were at least 6-7 democrats in favor.

In any case, it was merely stating AGAIN what had ALREADY been legislated before (and Biden simply refuse to execute what the Constitution demands)

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