It is hard to understand a U. S. State Department spokeswoman can say the U. S. is responding to Putin's energy scares when the first decision of President Obama is to delay further construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The U. S. government wants the country to be on a path to abolish use of fossil fuels because of the false premise carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is causing catastrophic global warming. Putin could not want a better response from the U. S

James Rust, Professor

This highlights the absurdity of the present escalation in Ukraine. Europe needs Russian gas, and Russia needs European money. Someone needs to step up to negotiate a way for both parties to walk away as winners from what is becoming a stand-off with only losers.
Germany seems to be the only likely contender, but have they the will to negotiate in good faith with Russia as an equal partner in a situation that is benefiting neither? If one loses the other does too, so they really do need to sit down and talk this through. After all, it is both the immediate and the long-term future of their Europe that is at stake here.
As starters, I would suggest that Crimea has now been reunited with Russia. Accept it. And Ukraine's future is as a neutral buffer state with neither NATO nor Russian militaries allowed in.
It seems so simple, but I wager it won't be.

Daniel Graeber works in the oil industry and accuses Russia of having a monopoly? Putin nationalised a lot of oil and gas and got rid of the toxic shadow bankers. This is why the West is demonising him.

Our 4 big oil cartels are taking us to the cleaners. They need competition from the likes of Russia to keep them honest.

‘morning Daniel,

I think the Ukraine issue is a bit of a distraction, I also think that both Russia and the EU would like to keep it that way.

Sure the Ukraine is holding strategic access to Russian military bases and ports in the Crimea, they also owe Russia for gas they have already sold to the EU but not paid Russia for.

But Russia and the EU already have the dual gas pipeline Nord Stream which goes directly to Germany.

I am sure that whilst the Ukraine issue bubbles away, trade with Gazprom will flourish, the EU will continue to buy cheap fossil fuels from the USA, fracking will start in earnest, renewables will continue to decline, nuclear power scheduled for spooling down will be delayed and everyone will be a winner, except the Ukraine

Well, is Putin doing the world a favor?
There are other sources of gas far more reliable, far more sustainable, and far cheaper than anything Russia or anyone else can extract from the ground!
And here I'm talking about biogas!

It's not hard to make biogas, and every family of household or high rise produces enough biological waste, which if processed, could power their homes indefinitely and 24/7!
All that's needed, is for a high rise or a suburb, to locate a couple of container sized tanks at the lowest point, to minimize pumping requirements.

The two tank, hermetically sealed, closed cycle smell free system, one operating at around 32C and the second at 55C, will convert biological waste to much methane gas!
You know, the stuff a power hungry Putin's trying to use to blackmail the west's compliance with?

After scrubbing this gas can be stored wherever convenient and inside simple bladders.
If used to provide endless reliable power and equally endless free hot water, via super silent solid state ceramic fuel cells?
The energy coefficient, will produce around about a 50% salable surplus. which could be fed into a national grid, the way we now feed solar power into one?

The day will dawn, not too far ahead in time, when we and many others will have no choice, but to make this choice!
Why not make it now, and have many others follow our very pragmatic lead!

Yes sure, Colonel Putin doesn't want it, but hey, who give a rats what the new sabre rattling Russian Czar wants!?

Were the Ukraine to start making its own gas, with this far more reliable and cheaper means, Putin would likely backpedal so fast, he'd pass himself going forward?
Rhrosty.

Ajay:
We could compete with president Putin, by exploiting our own oil.
Various industry experts, have calculated that we have more hydrocarbon reserves to our immediate north than the entire middle east.

And the sheer number of mystery oil slicks, suggest that this evaluation could be true or even easily exceeded.

We could just crack on and develop these fields for ourselves and the one trillion PA+ this bonanza could add to the national purse!

We can be fairly certain there is at least 5 billion barrels of sweet light crude in the Townsville trough, and considerably more, just a little further out!

And the industry gets incredibly excited over reserves as low as an estimated 2 billion barrels!
No doubt we will also find copious NG not too far away, some of which already bubbles to the surface as millions of cubic metres escaping into the atmosphere every day.

Now, many may not be aware, but instead of compressing NG, to convert it to LNG; it is possible to pass it through a comparatively simple catalytic process, that knocks off a few hydrogen atoms off and leaves liquid methanol behind.
Which is a most excellent high octane substitute for petrol or AV Gas.

Traditional Australian sweet light crude leaves the ground as a virtually ready to use diesel, needing only a little insitu chill filtering, to remove a few sand particles and a soluble wax content: and, natural gas leaves the wellhead at subzero temperatures! Connect the energy free dots!

We really don't need to import very much, but could export much of our surplus, if we decided as pragmatists, to give ourselves permission to access it, and export to many places, including Europe. And in so, doing earn ourselves as much as one trillion per, or around 2.5 times, what we currently extract from the community as total tax!

Govt doesn't need cuts, or to collect more tax, it just needs to help itself to more revenue! All that's missing is the can do political will and practical pragmatism!
Rhrosty.