Hacker News Reader

Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

EU has gas reserves that it does not want to exploit. It's as if it's waiting for something ...

They might also be able to rely on Canada ("LNG Canada" export facility starting up currently) in the near future for LNG imports. OgsyedIE's point about using exports to crowd out Russian gas is spot on, you have to drown the global LNG market in cheap gas until Russia fails.

US EIA: North America’s LNG export capacity is on track to more than double by 2028 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62984 - September 3, 2024

France recently (~2 years) discovered a fossil hydrogen reserve (~46 million tons), but that will take time to develop and LNG imports are a potential bridge while also providing time for renewables and storage deployments to continue to push out gas for generation.

France strikes Hydrogen gold: World’s largest Hydrogen reserve worth $92 billion could make it a global leader in clean energy revolution - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/f... - March 24th, 2025

French drillers may have stumbled upon a mammoth hydrogen deposit - https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/french-drillers-may-... - September 20th, 2023

[EU] Electricity from renewable sources reaches 47% in 2024 - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d... - March 19th, 2025

> They might also be able to rely on Canada

Maybe a dumb question, but wouldn't that have to be transported by ships rather than pipeline in that case, if it's supposed to go all the way to Europe? Sounds a lot more expensive if so.

Not a dumb question. That is what the LNG export market is: cooling fossil gas down cryogenically to liquid natural gas at an export facility, loading onto ships, and unloading at an import terminal (which can float and be repositioned geographically as demand warrants). Is it expensive? The question is: compared to what? For Europe, is it cheaper to lob military hardware at Russia or to pay a premium for gas (vs buying from Gazprom), causing the Russian economy to head towards failure? You're spending the fiat either way. Price is what you pay, optionality is potentially what you get.

> [Gazprom] Management misjudged how resolute European capitals would be, according to one of the executives, who said the thinking inside the company was that Europe would quickly be back "begging" for Russian gas supplies to resume. Despite the economic pain of higher energy costs, the EU has not rolled back sanctions.

> "We proved to be wrong," the executive said.

> U.S. gas exporters quickly moved to replace Russian gas in Europe. The U.S. has become the biggest exporter of LNG to the continent, with supplies tripling since 2021. Europe still buys Russia's sea-borne liquefied natural gas (LNG), but mainly from Gazprom's rivals, Novatek's Yamal LNG plant.

> The European Union aims to end its use of Russian fossil fuels by 2027 and its overall gas consumption has decreased in part due to a shift to renewable energy sources.

Russia's high-flying gas exporter [Gazprom] crippled as Europe stays away - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gazproms-grandeur-fa... | https://archive.today/3lHKy - March 13, 2025

LNG Market - Comprehensive Study Report & Recent Trends - https://introspectivemarketresearch.com/reports/lng-market/ - August 2024

Economics of Gas Transportation by Pipeline and LNG - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-86884-0_... | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86884-0_2

(commodities market participant, no current LNG exposure, think in systems)

> Is it expensive? The question is: compared to what?

I mean, compared to pipelines, as mentioned in my comment. AFAIK, we (Spain) get most of our gas from North Africa (Algeria I guess?), so there are more pipelines into Europe, not just from Russia.

So I guess I more wanted to know how the costs compared between shipping this cryogenically frozen gas and importing natural gas from say Africa.

I believe that there are difficulties between Spanish and other countries in terms of pipe sizes et al, which makes the African route harder.

I'd be curious what the time, effort, and cost would be to lay HVDC cable between Africa and Spain and burn the fossil gas in Africa (vs moving it to Europe over pipeline to burn). Over time, you could use storage and renewables on the Africa side to green the energy.

>EU has gas reserves that it does not want to exploit

Because of environmentalism. We want gas, but we also want it from someone willing to tear up his back yard for it, so we can cosplay as being eco-friendly.

That's a pretty cynical take. Setting up oil and gas reserves is a longterm thing, I think it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure, even if moving off of exist damaging fuel isn't immediate.

> it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure

The EU has flowed like a trillion dollars into LNG infrastructure with longer payback timelines than wells.

I do care about the environment but at the moment I'm watching Britain (i.e. home, there are many like it but this one is mine) basically sacrifice itself at the alter of net zero while India proudly announces that it's extracted a _billion_ tons of coal this year.

Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear.

I remember having conversations with "serious" adults when I was 14 about why it was mad to bet the house on wind and solar (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later, we really, really, need that baseload.

There are no energy-poor rich countries.

Some are completely happy being poorer and colder but I think something will snap soon in Britain in particular. Blair will have Ed Miliband disapeared soon.

> (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later

Over that decade, the UK's one nuclear reactor under construction has gone from site approval to .. still not finished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

Mind you, quite a lot of the no-progress-on-anything can be blamed on Britain's NIMBYs and press. People want electricity but hate pylons; what can you do?

> Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear.

I work in the energy sector and there's a huge amount of misinformation/confusion around why energy is expensive (I'm gonna ignore unreliable because that's a whole other can of worms). The energy price is almost entirely set by natural gas, the UK doesn't yet have the ability to turn away natural gas as a source, meaning it basically has to pay whatever's asked.

Even if you don't care about the environment (although I think you should!) and just want cheap energy, more renewable energy and flexibility in the market is exactly what you're looking for. You can actually see this on charts super clearly. Take a look on https://grid.iamkate.com/ specically at the energy mixup and the wholesale energy cost. You'll see that the amount of gas being used is an inverted graph of the cost (i.e. when we're using gas as a nation, that's driving up the price, when we don't have to, energy is a lot cheaper, and sometimes negatively priced)

Of course it does, if the wind doesn't blow what else can we burn?

You don't have to burn anything. You can store energy and release it later with batteries and hydraulic pumps (maybe not enough to take ypu all the way just yet, but a lot further than where we currently are).

Although, if you do want to burn something, you can burn biofuel (basically wood). The UK's only company that does this, Drax, are really not great ecologically, but just focusing on cost, diversifying from gas to a mix with more biofuel would have huge benefits.

A long-term thing. In the Netherlands decades ago a huge gas reserve was found. And it made us Dutch (and esp. Exxon and Shell) rich. And the region where it was discovered? The Dutch government left the people in the province of Groningen with billions of earthquake damage, destroyed homes, and a fight of a lifetime to get proper compensation. This has been a huge topic in Dutch politics for some time now, and finally the decision was to close the gas fields to spare further damages to the inhabitants living above them.

Just to put things in perspective, there is still ~3 billion m3 of gas (roughly 7 years of EU consumption). And the biggest earthquake was 3.6 on Richter scale (they are pretty shallow though, ~3km). 0 dead, 0 injured.

I am pretty sure Russia had a hand in amplifying the concerns of people hit by those earthquakes.

edit: when writing about stress for Dutch people, you can also mention the stress caused by not being able to afford heating/reducing heating to 16 deg C

> That's a pretty cynical take

Okay, so is Trump playing the tarrif game to bring manufacturing back home, or is cynicism and bad faith only okay when it's about US conservatives? Because the hypocrisy is on full display here.

I'm fine with being fair to the EU and giving them the benefit of the doubt, but only if we're fair to everyone.

This kind of behavior is totally in-character for Europe though. Europeans want to have all the fruits of a high-income society, but they want to outsource all the morally dicey bits. This pattern is constant: immigration (they want the migrants to go away, but want to seem enlightened and progressive, so they pay Tunisia and Morocco a bunch of money to have the concentration camps stay out of sight and out of mind), defense (they want national defense but don't want to pay for it or look militarized, so they underspent for decades and offloaded all the costs onto America, which was a viable strategy until all of a sudden it wasn't), and so on. It's not hard to see European energy policy following exactly the same pattern.

If they’re already tearing up their back yard, wouldn’t it be strictly more environmentally friendly to buy from them rather than tear up our own back yard?

There's no real environmental impact to drilling the North Sea other than carbon emissions, which obviously happen either way.

> which obviously happen either way.

No? If you don’t drill then the carbon emissions from that drilling don’t happen.

I think that fact opens a loophole for carbon credits, actually.

No world leader honestly expects Russia (population 150M, GDP $2T (nominal)) to start a general European war. NATO's combined population is 950M and their combined GDP is $50T. Not even the Russians are that crazy.

The people scaremongering about the Russian menace are playing a cynical game designed to drum up support for the war in Ukraine. They understand that people are selfish, and are thus more likely to support the war in Ukraine if they believe that it keeps the Russian bear from their doorstep.

Not a full on war maybe buy low level attacks and attempts to subvert the political system to put in pro Russian permanent leaders like Orban, and their attempt to do likewise in Romania. If they did take over Ukraine I'm sure they'd start making opportunistic threats over the Baltics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com