Zgodba o evropskih sankcijah proti Rusiji postaja vedno bolj perverzna. Otroci v osnovni šoli sicer čivkajo, da sankcije proti Rusiji ne delujejo, da Evropa z njimi ne more zaustaviti ruske agresije v Ukrajini in da s sankcijami evropski politiki zgolj kaznujejo svoje lastne prebivalce in uničujejo lastno gospodarstvo. Toda mantra ekonomsko nepismenih evropskih politikov ostaja neomajna: s sankcijami želimo prekiniti denarni tok, s katerim Putin financira vojno v Ukrajini. Pri čemer politikov ne motijo diametralno drugačna dejstva, in sicer da Rusija še naprej prodaja podobne količine nafte in plina, vendar po 2 do 3-krat višjih cenah kot prej in da torej Putin s temi prihodki še lažje financira vojno v Ukrajini, kot če sankcij ne bi bilo.
Velja nasprotno: če bi Evropa prenehala s sankcijami proti Rusiji, bi cene energentov upadle (in z njimi tudi inflacijski pritiski ter težave centralnih bank, pa tudi recesijski pritiski bi se zmanjšali) in Putinov ekstra denarni rok bi upadel, s tem pa bi zašel v težave glede financiranja nadaljevanja agresije v Ukrajini. (Ne pozabite, da mora cena nafte dosegati vsaj 50 dolarjev za sodček, da lahko Rusija zapre svoj mirnodobni proračun).
Zelo perverzna pa je zgodba glede trga, ki se je oblikoval z namenom izogibanja sankcij s strani samih evropskih držav. Dobro dokumentirani so primeri, da določene države (kot je Indija) z diskontom kupujejo rusko nafto in jo nato s premijo prodajajo evropskim kupcem. Podoben perverzen primer je, da Saudska Arabija preko Egipta za lastne potrebe kupuje poceni rusko nafto, lastno nafto pa z visoko premijo prodaja Evropejcem. Tretji perverzen primer pa se nanaša na kitajske nakupe ruskega utekočinjenega plina (LNG), namesto Japonske, ki spoštuje sankcije, ter prodajo tega plina z visoko premijo naprej v Evropo. Evropa naj bi letos od Kitajske kupila že za 4 mio ton LNG, kar znaša okrog 7% evropskega uvoza plina v prvem polletju. V Evropi (tako Financial Times) to slavijo kot uspeh (kot geografsko prestrukturiranje dobav plina), v resnici pa gre samo za oblikovanje dodatne uvozne odvisnosti pri istem ruskem plinu – namesto odvisnosti samo od Rusije dodatno še od Kitajske.
Naj še enkrat ponovim, to evropsko hipokritično izogibanje sankcijam zgolj pomeni, da namesto da bi bila pri plinu odvisna zgolj od Rusije, postaja Evropa zdaj odvisna še od Kitajske – in to pri istem ruskem plinu, le da je tokrat uvožen iz Kitajske. In še huje, medtem ko bi Evropa lahko kupovala ruski utekočinjeni zemeljski plin za ceno X, mora namesto tega zdaj plačevati 2X, 3X ali več, samo zato, da lahko svetu sporoča, da ne bo financirala Putinovega režima. V resnici pa zdaj ob Putinu plačuje dodatno še Xiju, ki pobire visoke premije pri preprodaji ruskega plina. Ali drugače rečeno, namesto da bi se znebila enega energetskega vladarja (Putina), je Evropa zdaj dobila dva (Putina in Xija).
In še več, s povečevanjem odvisnosti od Kitajske Evropa postaja potencialno impotentna glede politik do Kitajske. Kaj bo naredila EU, če (zaradi ameriških provokacij) Kitajska napade Tajvan ali ga povsem trgovinsko izolira? Od koga bo, če sankcionira Kitajsko, nato Evropa kupovala ruski plin? Evropska norost in neumnost preprosto nimata meja.
Katere šole so obiskovali evropski politiki? Toliko da vem, da slučajno nanje ne vpišem mojih otrok.
Spodaj je nekaj odstavkov iz zapisa na Zerohedge, ki poantira na to temo.
In July, the SCMP reported that according to Chinese customs data, in the first six months of the year, China bought a total of 2.35 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) – valued at US$2.16 billion. The import volume increased by 28.7% year on year, with the value surging by 182%. It meant Russia has surpassed Indonesia and the United States to become China’s fourth-largest supplier of LNG so far this year!
This, of course, is not to be confused with pipeline gas, where Russian producer Gazprom recently announced that its daily supplies to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline had reached a new all-time high (Russia is China’s second-largest pipeline natural gas supplier after Turkmenistan), and earlier revealed that the supply of Russian pipeline gas to China had increased by 63.4% in the first half of 2022.
What was behind this bizarre surge in Russian LNG imports, analysts speculated? After all, while China imports over half of the natural gas it consumes, with around two-thirds in the form of LNG, demand this year had fallen sharply amid economic headwinds and widespread shutdowns. In other words, why the surge in Russian LNG when i) domestic demand is just not there and ii) at the expense of everyone else?
“The increase in Russian LNG could be a displacement of cargoes going to Japan or South Korea because of sanctions, or weaker demand there,” said Michal Meidan, director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
One thing that was clear: China wanted to keep its arms-length gas dealing with Russia as unclear as possible, which is why the General Administration of Customs of China stopped publicizing the breakdown in trade volume for pipeline natural gas since the beginning of the year, with spokesman Li Kuiwen confirming that the move was to “protect the legitimate business rights and interests of the relevant importers and exporters”.
Well, we now know the answer: China has been quietly reselling that evil, tainted Russian LNG to the one place that desperately needs it more than anything. Europe… and of course, it is charging a kidney’s worth of markups in the process.
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… Europe’s imports of LNG have soared 60% year on year in the first six months of 2022, according to research firm Kpler.
Some more details:
China’s JOVO Group, a big LNG trader, recently disclosed that it had resold an LNG cargo to a European buyer.
A futures trader in Shanghai told Nikkei that the profit made from such a transaction could be in the tens of millions of dollars or even reach $100mn.
China’s biggest oil refiner Sinopec Group also acknowledged on an earnings call in April that it has been channelling excess LNG into the international market.
Local media have said that Sinopec alone has sold 45 cargoes of LNG, or about 3.15mn tonnes. The total amount of Chinese LNG that has been resold is probably more than 4mn tonnes, equivalent to 7 per cent of Europe’s gas imports in the half year to the end of June.
Make no mistake: all of this “excess” LNG was soured in part or in whole in Russia, but since it has been “tolled” in China, it is no longer Russian. It is instead – drumroll – Chinese LNG.
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Amusingly, without expressly stating it, the FT does imply that Europe is buying Russian LNG by way of China:
If Russia ends up exporting more gas to China as a means to punish Europe, China will have more capacity to resell its surplus gas to the spot market — indirectly helping Europe.
Why not just admit the obvious – that China is helping Russia skirt sanctions as both countries get very rich in the process? Because then the FT’s own judgment – after all, the newspaper is a conduit of the neoliberal thinking that demanded a complete embargo on Russian energy, an embargo which even the WSJ now admits (see “Russia Confounds the West by Recapturing Its Oil Riches“) has backfired spectacularly – would be put into question.
FT’s flaws aside, the newspaper is correct that the longer this kind of circuitous bypass of Russian sanctions by a hypocritical Europe (which signals its virtue so loudly when the adversary is Russia but doesn’t dare say peep when it’s China) continues, the bigger China’s influence on Europe will be:
The more desperate Europe becomes about its energy supplies, the more China’s policy decisions will have the power to affect the bloc. As Europe attempts to wrestle out of its dependence on Russia for energy, the irony is that it is becoming more dependent on China.
In the end, all Europe has done is replace one energy master (as Trump warned in 2018) with another, even though both are joined at the hip and laughing at the stupidity of Brussels which, under the sage advice of a petulant Scandinavian teenager, made all of this possible just in time for China – which together with Putin now determines Europe’s daily energy intake – to invade Taiwan without a peep from Europe’s virtuous signalers.
Vir: Zerohedge
DAMIJAN blog 
Pri fotovoltaiki, najpomembnejšem OVE, je odvisnost od Kitajske preko 80%. V primeru konflikta med Kitajsko in ZDA zaradi Tajvana in posledičnih sankcij po vzoru ruskih, se lahko za panele obrišemo pod nosom.
Evropa enostavno ne razume geopolitike. 900
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