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Ephemera in Stone
in cyberspace nobody can hear you scream
January 6th, 2009 
in pub

Russia has cut gas supplies to certain countries (Telegraph, Guardian). Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, Greece, and the Czech Republic are affected, Bulgaria especially as it has no other source of gas.

I haven’t found a good map of European gas pipelines.

There was a good post on the Oil Drum about this the other day. It claims

  • the conflict started in 1992, not in 2006
  • Russia cannot win a gas war against Ukraine and knows it
  • the real underlying stakes are not about Russia or Ukraine (actually corruption)

The UK is not on the pipeline that’s been shut down, so we’re ok. And we do not import all our gas from Russia or via Ukraine anyway. But we do not have that much gas storage (a legacy of being able to take all we needed from the North Sea, no longer possible), which counts against us.

This must be Monday. I never could get the hang of Mondays.