‘Europe sanctions Russian oil.’ Statements like this are common in the media (including in my own articles) but they can be misleading. ‘Europe sanctions Russian oil’ makes it sound like there is a single actor, ‘Europe’, who has decided not to buy oil from another actor, ‘Russia’ – in this case because the former disapproves of, or wishes to punish, the latter.
But that’s not what’s going on.
What ‘Europe sanctions Russian oil’ actually means is that European states have prohibited European companies from buying oil from Russian companies. In other words, the embargo involves coercion of European companies by European states. This is not to say it’s unjustified (that’s a separate issue); I’m just pointing out how it really works.
Now, companies are beholden to their shareholders, or to tax-payers if they’re owned by the state. While individual CEOs may have strong, personal convictions for or against the sanctions, they have to do what is best for their shareholders – not what is best for Ukraine, NATO or the West.
So if companies can find a way around the sanctions, while still respecting the letter of the law, they’ll almost certainly take it. They have no interest in complying with the ‘spirit’ of the sanctions. This is particularly true under an oil embargo, since oil is one of the most useful products in the economy.
I previously discussed one way in which companies have been flouting the ‘spirit’ of the sanctions: importing Russian oil that has been mixed with Kazakh oil during transit, and for which they can therefore issue a Kazakh “certificate of origin”.
Recently, someone on Twitter gave this example:
I work as a maritime pilot. Had a Russian ship with oil come into a Dutch port, we passed the breakwaters, swung around and headed out to sea again, to Germany. Magically the cargo was suddenly labelled as ‘Dutch oil’, so the Germans were happy to receive it.
Another way companies can get around sanctions is by buying Russian oil from third parties. It’s well known that India has been importing crude oil from Russia, refining it, and then re-exporting it to Europe at a profit.
Alternatively, other oil exporters can simply buy up the Russian oil themselves. Saudi Arabia has been importing crude oil from Russia, and then setting it aside for domestic consumption. Meanwhile it sells its own oil to Europe at market prices, which greatly exceed those it pays for the Russian oil.
Unless the West literally blockades Russian ports, or manages to convince countries like China, India and Saudi Arabia to go along with an oil-price cap (which seems very unlikely), I can’t see how the embargo will work.
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The government has indeed done its job – stopped mining coal, closed coal fired power stations, stopped buying cheap gas from Russia, subsidised unreliable power like wind and solar.
Imports from Russia were only 4% in 2021, so not much of a loss.
Enough to make the difference… lights on, or lights off on a cold day. But in any case, a supply source if needed.
The responsible thing to do would be to simply build some gas generators quickly…..
It would only take 12 months.
This is not complicated.
Lose the overthinking……..
Rolls Royce also make small scale nuclear generators, except the Mandarins have insisted RR must tender against foreign ‘competition’. Not sure who the Civil Service work for but it’s not the UK.
“Consistency never has been a mark of stupidity if the diplomats who have mishandled our relations were merely stupid they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor. The fact that not one single mistake has fallen in our favor I would suggest that’s not incompetence that’s people working to a script “
James Forrestal
The civil service work for themselves; a job creation industry full of ever expanding ‘teams’ that rush around from meetings about meetings to other meetings about meetings; a self licking lollipop.
It isn’t clear to me why the government doesn’t seek to pass legislation that allows them to hire and fire civil servants at will, at least for the top few levels of seniority. Should be sufficiently uncontentious to easily pass in the Commons.
That should be in Starmer’s interest as well, although he might take the long term view that the civil service is on his side anyway; or at least on the side of his cause.
Interesting to see that Harwell actually developed a novel thermal reactor. A bit of a baby, though, with a peak output of around 3kW. Calder Hall was reportedly the first commercial scale one to come into service.
Incidentally, if you look up a list of UK based power stations with nuclear reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors you’ll see that there are quite a few due for shut down over the next few years – well before planned commissioning dates for replacements, like Hinkley Point C.
I’m aware of the RR proposals for using SMR units on land; it might be nearly as good as there marketing website. Spot the controversy about the location of them. And when it comes to domestic gas reserves, this might be interesting: https://www.bgs.ac.uk/geology-projects/shale-gas/shale-gas-in-the-uk/ especially if you map it against the Parliamentary Constituencies!
If there was still justice in the UK the ppl who inflicted net zero would be hung for treason. I fear prolonged mid winter power cuts are the only way to focus minds.
Hanged. Pictures are hung, traitors are hanged.
The issue is so urgent that at least two candidate designs should be financed in parallel. If either shows signs of failing it must be recognised promptly snd another then viable option pushed forward.
we cannot afford to let Whitehall chose a dud because their friendly preferred business or adviser says so.
even better, provide (say) one third of the initial capital and allow tax efficient subscription for another third. Give orders now with a big bonus for contingent on earliest delivery of a gigawatt of output.
It is not about net zero. It is about Marxism.
Nuclear is dramatically more expensive than natural gas (and to a lesser extent coal).
It also takes vastly longer to build the relevant power stations, is much less practical in the sense of an inability to ramp up and down in response to ever-changing demand etc.
It only really came into existence to provide a pseudo-ethical cover for humanity’s greatest shame, mass incinerating nuclear weapons. Also more recently Net Zero delusions about a need to avoid C02 emissions (in reality to some extent the more the better, it is after all one of the main fuels for plant growth).
We need to completely abandon all these contemporary ideology and politics driven attempts to overthrow the simple practical wisdom of the Industrial Revolution – that fossil fuels represent a near perfectly packaged source of cheap energy, hence route towards material security and comfort for all.
“It takes longer to build the relevant power stations”——-Yes but that is a bit like saying it takes longer to built a ship than a bicycle. OfCourse it does. But if you are always going to wait till 20 years after you need the ship to start building it, your will have made a pigs ear of it won’t you? You will have run out of ships. And that is what government have done with energy policy. Made a total pigs ear of it, but for political purposes. ——–I know that Nuclear does not work well with back up for turbines like gas does, but if you have enough Nuclear and gas you won’t need the dumb turbines anyway will you?
The most important commodity is energy, and unfortunately government dictate energy policy. This was ok in the past, and even when the market was privatised in the 80’s and everything ticked along great till 2008. ——Why 2008? That was when Labour (Miliband) gave us the Climate Change Act. This set us on the path to getting rid of affordable energy and replacing it with unaffordable energy. (To save the planet). That situation got even worse in 2019 with Teresa May’s Net Zero amendment increasing the amount of emissions we were allowed to emit up from 80% of 1990 levels to 100%. A quick look at energy bills over this time reveals the steady year on year rise in people’s bills as FREE WIND is not cheap, and the more wind energy we got the higher the bills went. Till today when we now have the highest electricity prices in Europe along with Germany and Denmark. The 3 countries with the most turbines. What a coincidence. Somehow Nuclear energy was not preferred despite it having zero emissions , and despite the fact that France was getting 80% of it’s electricity from Nuclear plants and unsurprisingly their bills were half of ours. I keep hearing about “Greedy Energy Companies” but you don’t get much more greedy for taxpayers money than silly planet saving governments who when we fill up out petrol tanks take 50% tax on that. Even the mafia would blush at extortion of that level.
The error continuously made despite all the evidence, is the to believe that the aim of Net Zero is transition from fossil fuels to energy provided from other sources such as wind and solar.
The aim is transition to one energy source alone, electricity, which is instantly controllable up to the point of use, to reduce the amount available in order to reduce industrial activity and consumption and thereby reduce the Human ‘environmental footprint’ to save Mother Earth.
There are ZERO plans to increase electricity output, just replace existing fuel sources, ZERO plans to upgrade the grid – long distance and local networks – to carry and distribute the 2x to 3x extra load.
Stop yapping on about nuclear being ‘the’ solution – it isn’t. Non-problems don’t require solutions. Talking up nuclear as ‘the’ solution accepts the premise there is a problem to be solved.
Insofar as a problem of electricity supply caused by Govt policy is concerned, the easiest most ready solution, is coal. Quick, easy, inexpensive to build and operate, provides constant, dependable output, coal is the lowest cost, least market price volatile and most abundant.
Net Zero and the CoVid scamdemic are not cockup, it IS deliberate and calculated.
Yep Fossil fuels are the choice if you want affordable reliable energy. But Nuclear is also an option that you underestimate. Unlike wind and sun it does exactly what it says on the tin.