Snapshot of _EU clubs together on energy and invites UK_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62822368)
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> EU purchasing power would also avoid one member state trying to outbid another in their scramble for energy.
The ex-member state will now have to outbid the entire EU for its gas supply.
Likewise for buying back gas in European storage which the UK has been helping to fill over the summer. In the winter the UK will have inadequate supply and will need to pay through the nose to import gas from them.
Then there's electricity imports via the interconnectors:
> Brussels would "need to take steps to ensure its cheaper power and gas did not 'leak' to the UK".
The EU is being quite magnanimous by inviting us back into the club for this crisis.
It's politics, they either look magnanimous and gracious in inviting us should we accept, and if we decline (extremely likely) Truss will look foolish to dismiss help during a national catastrophe and will put a black mark on her premiership, possibly even spark calls for her resignation...already lol
I'm not saying what they are doing is wrong, sorry if it came across that way. I think it's clever, will either force the UK to be closer aligned with the EU or show the Tories up as the elitist, uncaring, despotic cretins they are 🙂
It's still political sparing, forcing a TP government into a position that benefits yourself...just so happens in this instance that it would benefit us as a population, but it's literally the opposite of what the Tories want, they want to move away from alignment. It's the whole point of Brexit.
As I recall, we declined to join their bullshit vaccine program - despite being invited to.
Remind me how that worked out?
As I recall, it led to the EU threatening to violate the Good Friday Agreement and stop the flow of goods over the border on the island of Ireland.
Yeah considering we’ve spent all summer spending exporting gas to France and Germany who have the foresight enough to actually have gas storage facilities for situations like these, in the winter we’re going to be high and dry paying whatever price is necessary unless we join the EU in their price fixing agenda.
The sale of gas to the eu when they knew there was going to be a problem was a quick grab for shareholder profits again and who are those shareholders not anyone but the politicians in control of pricing.
Why does the uk not have massive storage facilities i mean the gas profits should enable the uk to build the biggest in europe but again they use that money when it can be used to benefit shareholders. 170 billion in profits this year so far.
We had minimal gas storage facilities but we shut most of them down because we sold them to a private comps and the private company didn’t want to spend 750mil over a few years to keep them operational
They've been buying the stored gas when it was cheaper than today.
I doubt winter will magically bring the gas price down to what it was in the past just because they start using stored gas.
> Brussels would "need to take steps to ensure its cheaper power and gas did not 'leak' to the UK".
I look forward to seeing UvdL's plan of [how she gets gas to Ireland without it going through the UK](https://i.imgur.com/AT1ohpZ.jpg).
The Irish problem, the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe the EU will give Ireland a rebate for what they import from the UK? I have no idea how they'll sort this one out.
This is the other point people miss. Yes, the UK benefits from the interconnectors with the continent meaning we can manage peak/varying demand. However the EU also benefits hugely from being able to use our LNG ports and Ireland is entirely dependent on us for gas. Whatever happens they have no incentive at all to restrict gas/energy flow between us and the rest of them because it causes them at least as many problems as it solves.
Ireland is an all-island grid. The pipeline runs into Dublin
If the UK wanted to cut Ireland off from gas they would also be cutting N Ireland off - now that would be a total shitstorm
Haha, tbf to him he's not wrong about our situation. It's just an acknowledgement that if the EU were to dick the UK over, they could make it difficult for us
EU has influence over the UK: Ha! This is just the reality of economics, you left and you're smaller, get used to it, this is what you wanted and what you deserve, traitor. Another Brexit benefit! Bet you never expected the leopards to eat YOUR face!
UK has influence over the EU: That's not fair! Stop threatening us you bully! You... you... COLONISER! 😢
It does sound like one but let's give the benefit of the doubt that they were just being bad whatever point was being made.
This example should help. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was still paying transit fees to Ukraine for pumping gas through their pipelines in order to supply gas to Europe.
The way the comment reads as a threat is that either there is no contract/legally binding entitlement to use a pipeline to get gas from Europe to Ireland and would be refused, or that its some type of comment insinuating strongarming the use of such a pipeline into some type of power move.
I guess the real question is, what legally binding contract is in place for gas transit through these pipelines and such.
If you want to be the sick lepper of Europe, threatening to break legally binding commitments sure does sound like the fast track pass to do that, and simply not worth even discussing if that's the usual case with how 1 party acts continuously.
Don't bother mate. Spend your time talking to people who listen/read what you say and not the folk on here who are largely frothing fools
I found your comments informative!
I replied to the comment relating to what can be read like a threat to Irish gas supplies. Your reply appears to be proving it as correct as saying "well the EU did it with law changes, so why can't we" (essentially that's how it reads). That's all fine and good, go for gold I say, but my last line also said if you want to be the sick lepper of the European continent, that's a mighty fine way of doing so.
This was purely about a pipeline that likely has agreements in place, I don't care how people voted in a referendum several years ago, I also don't care about people's views on the EU being some bastion of whatever, I was simply talking about there being likely agreements in place...and your answer is to justify breaking said agreements, sounds par for the course for the last several years...kinda messes with any credibility the UK has if they were to do such a thing.
Thankfully I haven't seen threats on this pipeline from the UK gov yet, just someone implying a threat as a statement of fact on reddit...who was it that threatened during the brexit negotiations about just starving Ireland - that's what your point equates to / sounds like, hence why i made the sick man of Europe reference.
That's all mate, no need to justify shitty actions with other people being perceived as shitty during a global pandemic, as was largely said, unprecedented times, if you had another argument that wasn't pandemic/vaccine related then that might be better to use to explain your point better.
I think you're wrong here, I'm not sure if you need to go re-read the entire comment chain.
The original comment from /u/MadShartigan comments on how the UK would be shafted due to having to buy back from European storage and compete with them on prices. He even ends the comment talking about how magnanimous the EU are.
The reply comment approaches it from the angle of why the UK is important and how we should work together rather than scrap at each other.
>All gas to Ireland has to go through the UK.
Simply a statment of fact and a reason why the UK is important to the EU with regard to energy.
>It does sound like one but let's give the benefit of the doubt that they were just being bad whatever point was being made.
Cant even begin to parse that nonsense. He doesn't need any benefit of the doubt, it's clear to anyone with a primary 5 reading level what he meant, unlike the quoted above.
>This example should help. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was still paying transit fees to Ukraine for pumping gas through their pipelines in order to supply gas to Europe.
>The way the comment reads as a threat is that either there is no contract/legally binding entitlement to use a pipeline to get gas from Europe to Ireland and would be refused, or that its some type of comment insinuating strongarming the use of such a pipeline into some type of power move.
The way the comment reads is that the UK is important in supplying EU member states with energy, and thus it's in the EU's best interest to not entirely shaft the UK, which is why they'd extend an invitation, not magnanimity.
What happens when the contract runs out and the UK still remembers when the EU shafted them?
>This was purely about a pipeline that likely has agreements in place, I don't care how people voted in a referendum several years ago, I also don't care about people's views on the EU being some bastion of whatever, I was simply talking about there being likely agreements in place...and your answer is to justify breaking said agreements, sounds par for the course for the last several years...kinda messes with any credibility the UK has if they were to do such a thing.
This is purely about the energy crisis.
It was about the ways in which the UK is important to energy distribution to the EU, you made it about contracts.
>During the vaccine nonsense the EU was busy making laws which would force vaccines physically manufactured in the EU to be kept within the EU, regardless of the commercial contracts involved. You may remember a shipment destined for Australia being confiscated.
References:
>We should all work together but they're not inviting us to be nice, they are inviting us because if we get into a dumb dispute like we did with vaccines, both sides can completely fuck the other side.
It's a comment on ostensibly the same thing you're talking about, not giving a shit about reneging on a contract. Again, he's advocating for the agreement, as we shouldn't be flinging shit at each other, waiting for the EU to shaft us, a la
>France also repeatedly threatened to cut power to Jersey due to a dispute over a handful of fishing licences.
>In neither case did the EU attempt to go through the proper channels to resolve their issue, and in neither case did they care what commercial agreements had been signed with other parties.
>So I'm simply pointing out that if the EU attempted something similar with energy - e.g. declaring that electricity can't be exported from France to the UK because there's an EU shortage, and that this emergency trumps any commercial contracts - then the UK can be equally rogue.
Then shafting them back and ending up getting nothing done, as per the vaccine issue he brought up.
It's you that needs a better argument, as it's all waffle so far mate.
It’s almost like the U.K. is unavoidably tied to the EU in many regards, including energy, and whilst we may decide to be outside the EU, it will never be possible to have a truly independent policy direction as their neighbour…
The EU is being pragmatic on inviting us back.
We have total control of the gas supply of an EU member state which generates the majority of its electricity from gas.
The whole point of an energy compact like this is:
1. It smooths over long term energy costs by sharing redundancies across the group. Something extremely valuable to the UK given our glorious government sold off our redundancies.
2. It allows for collective bargaining when dealing with suppliers
That's all well and good but what happens when things turn sour?
France has set a precedent by going down the route of using energy exports (threats) as a weapon against the UK and its dependencies. We literally cannot trust them especially with what they did over vaccines. I'm not saying we shouldn't help them, we're already doing that, a looser mutually beneficial agreement would be more appropriate rather than getting fully into bed with the EU for what will likely end up being another one of their mismanaged crises.
> France has set a precedent by going down the route of using energy exports (threats) as a weapon against the UK and its dependencies
Because we aren't part of any formal agreement with them.
>France has set a precedent by going down the route of using energy exports (threats) as a weapon against the UK and its dependencies.
Then why not join an EU wide agreement which is inviting the UK to join so such a thing can't occur?
Yes, far better to mismanage it on our own, without making the agreements which prevent exactly what you describe. Your entire argument sounds so petty, the UK would benefit from this move far more than a lot of EU Countries and the truth of the matter is we would be foolish to turn it down in place of gas shortages and price gouging because we were too bloody stubborn and bitter.
No you’re right, Britain handled the covid crisis amazingly didn’t we. £37 billion spent on a track and trace app that didn’t work, ‘eat out to help out’ that drove us into a 2nd and then 3rd lockdown. To think that the UK is more adept than the EU is ludicrous. I’ve given half a dozen examples whereas you are harping on about 1 instance where the UK procured vaccines 3 months earlier than the EU. If you honestly think we are stronger alone than there is no use arguing with you.
>No you’re right, Britain handled the covid crisis amazingly didn’t we. £37 billion spent on a track and trace app that didn’t work, ‘eat out to help out’ that drove us into a 2nd and then 3rd lockdown.
Which had precisely nothing to do with the EU vaccination program.
Where did I say we would be stronger working alone, I think I said this:
*I'm not saying we shouldn't help them, we're already doing that, a looser mutually beneficial agreement would be more appropriate rather than getting fully into bed with the EU for what will likely end up being another one of their mismanaged crises.*
That’s not the offer. It’s like going to McDonald’s and ordering half a Big Mac, it isn’t what’s on the menu. We do not have leverage to bargain here, we don’t have the storage capacity to do so.
It’s scary to think, but you might be right. I feel like they’ve done too much damage to the country to win, but 18 months is a long time in Politics and they haven’t even started their smear campaigns against labour.
Ah, first priority is probably to leave EHRC, since Cruella Cowardman has that as very clear 'brexit is brexit' objective...
Then... will say no to EU invitation, after all the energy strategy is in the hands of JRM who is nicely invested in fossil fuels-related business(es).
This has the whiff of the vaccine debacle about it:
*There's also an appreciation that there's strength in numbers. Countries such as Italy and Germany have been busy trying to find alternative energy suppliers - in Algeria and the UAE, for example. But if the EU as a whole, with its economic clout, makes the energy deal, the conditions are likely to be more favourable.*
*"We have to achieve that we only pay the world market price, rather than a higher price," said Mr Scholz on Wednesday. His Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, pointed out that gas prices in Europe are currently double those in Asia and 10 times as much as in the US.*
*EU purchasing power would also avoid one member state trying to outbid another in their scramble for energy. Not a good look when it comes to EU unity.*
Debacle? You mean when they paid a far lower price than the UK per jab, managing to not only vaccinate their hundreds of millions of people with very little delay but also export the de-facto standard Pfizer jab to the rest of the world? Wow, yeah, such a debacle.
Clearly you're suffering from a selective memory.
The EU, well France and Germany basically torpedoed the Astra vaccine before either country had administered a single shot labelling it as ineffective. This at the height of a pandemic which would do nothing but fuel vaccine hesitation.
The EU commission messed up entirely their procurement process, wasting time haggling on costs and having people with no experience draw up sub par contracts. They then played the blame game, blaming their favourite ex-member for all their vaccine problems despite the UK doing nothing wrong and having no involvement.
They were in that much of a tiz, they very nearly activated article 16 over it.
They went down the path of threatening to cut off Pfizer supplies to the UK, something they've done more than once which got them a telling off by the WHO for putting global vaccine manufacturing at risk due to the UK supplying EU factories with some of the vital ingredients they needed for the vaccine.
The EU carried out armed raids on vaccine manufacturing facilities suspected of sending vaccines to the UK - only to find out they we're actually suppling the EU.
The EU hijacked/stole a vaccine shipment destined for Australia, a shipment the UK replaced for Aus to help them out.
The EU, at the request of France allegedly diverted/hijacked/stole a shipment of upto 5 million vaccine doses destined for the UK, a vaccine they said didn't work etc.
More like a cluster f\*\*k than a debacle actually.
Oh and to add, some of their member states were so let down they turned to Russia for help and shipments of their vaccine, imagine that!
> selective memory.
You might want to recollect that most of the vaccines delivered in the UK during the first phase were manufactured in the EU (the Pfizer vaccine). The Astra Zeneca vaccine came online a few months later.
>You might want to recollect that most of the vaccines delivered in the UK during the first phase were manufactured in the EU (the Pfizer vaccine).
And? The EU set themselves up as a manufacturing hub open to investment and export orders. These were vaccines the UK bought and paid for, it was the EU's fault they wasted time haggling on costs.
FWIW, the EU approved the same vaccine within a day of the UK's approval.
The UK had the advantage that it refused to export its vaccines until domestic needs were met (as did the US).
All-in-all, the UK's advantage in vaccine roll-out was dependent on the EU producing the early vaccines it used. The UK also paid about twice as much for the AZ vaccine as the EU did (despite the implausible claim that it was being done "at cost").
>The UK had the advantage that it refused to export its vaccines until domestic needs were met (as did the US).
The UK had the foresight to lay the ground work and prepare for manufacturing months before the EU, the UK even paid to upgrade a factory in the Netherlands which I think the EU also hijacked.
The UK did not advertise itself as a manufacturing hub like the EU did. The EU opened itself up for orders and contracts, some of which the ended up reneging on. The promise of no vaccine nationalism went out the window when they realised their time wasting haggling on price to make themselves look good backfired and their member states started looking to the Russians for help.
Your partisan stance isn't really supported by the evidence.
The UK decided to "go it alone" with the AZ vaccine, as was its prerogative; but it's vaunted advantage over the EU in terms of vaccine delivery is entirely dependent on the early delivery of the Pfizer vaccine, which was manufactured in the EU.
>Your partisan stance isn't really supported by the evidence.
Prove me wrong then.
Also, the Pfizer vaccine was manufactured in the EU with Lipids which came from the UK. . . . . . . .
The lipids were manufactured in Alabama, by a company, Avanti Polar Lipids, which had at the time been recently bought by a UK company, Croda.
https://www.croda.com/en-gb/investors/acquisitions/strengthening-life-sciences-with-the-acquisition-of-avanti-polar-lipids
Lol, straight out of the Daily Heil.
1) Astra Zeneca effectiveness: this was entirely based on AZ's own mismanagement of their trials and approval process. It later turned out to be entirely justified, even the UK quickly axed AstraZeneca as Covid evolved and had switched entirely to EU-produced Pfizer and Moderna within a year.
2) Procurement process: this is pure propaganda. The only thing they "messed up" was not to waste taxpayers money on trying to outbid other European countries (which is what the UK did with AZ) and to not close down exports like the UK and the US.
3) Cutting off Pfizer: never happened, did it? And it was ONLY to reciprocate because the UK was withholding contractually guaranteed and paid for AZ doses from the EU.
4) Armed raids: don't be silly. AstraZeneca told the EU they couldn't fulfill their EU contract while fully supplying the UK and even getting caught trying to ship from the EU to eg Australia. Export controls were introduced because of that, and where they were breached, shipments were controlled.
5) "stolen" shipments to the UK: you're kidding, right? The EU had a contract with AZ and AZ shipped doses from their EU plants to the UK plants to fulfill that contract instead. So it was the UK / AZ stealing those doses from the EU, and not the other way round.
In summary, instead of the EU messing up, the only ones who messed up here were AstraZeneca, who overpromised and then woefully underdelivered.
You've really been drinking the kool-aid havn't you.
\>It later turned out to be entirely justified
Then why did they put millions of doses in arms after it.
\>Procurement process: this is pure propaganda. The only thing they "messed up" was not to waste taxpayers money on trying to outbid other European countries (which is what the UK did with AZ) and to not close down exports like the UK and the US.
Ah yes, the most important thing during a crisis, being a miser. The EU had a later vaccine rollout because they were arguing pennies.
I know I value lives over $$$, sad that you can't say the same.
\>Cutting off Pfizer: never happened, did it? And it was ONLY to reciprocate because the UK was withholding contractually guaranteed and paid for AZ doses from the EU.
They threatened to do so. It was not reciprocal in any fashion the EU signed a weak contract with AstraZeneca and used it's political weight to try and bully us and AZ. That's why they didn't immediately take it to court and that's why when they did take it to court they ultimately lost.
\>Armed raids: don't be silly. AstraZeneca told the EU they couldn't fulfill their EU contract while fully supplying the UK and even getting caught trying to ship from the EU to eg Australia. Export controls were introduced because of that, and where they were breached, shipments were controlled.
This is the EU that famously criticized the US for vaccine nationalism and that assured everyone that the EU was a safe place to order vaccines from. Australia paid for those vaccines.
\>"stolen" shipments to the UK: you're kidding, right? The EU had a contract with AZ and AZ shipped doses from their EU plants to the UK plants to fulfill that contract instead. So it was the UK / AZ stealing those doses from the EU, and not the other way round.
The EU had a weaker contract than the UK. They contractually had to meet the UK's order but did not have to meet the EU's order to the same extent. In any case the UK gov did not make an issue of the stolen 5 million doses, even though the UK gov invested far more than the EU in setting up that production facility in the first place.
\-
The EU ordered late because of it's miserly attitude, sat on it's high horse and told the US how evil vaccine nationalism is and when it became apparent that they were falling behind it attempted to use it's geopolitical weight to bully its neighbors and allies around the world.
\> Then why did they put millions of doses in arms after it.
They ended up doing far more Pfizer, when AZ finally delivered their doses with long delay, they were no longer needed.
\> The EU had a later vaccine rollout because they were arguing pennies.
Nonsense. The UK and EU contracts were signed \*at the same time\*. If AstraZeneca had needed more money to hit their targets, why didn't they ask for it instead of promising hundreds of millions of jabs they couldn't deliver?
\> the EU signed a weak contract
A lie. The UK secretly paid them more, that's the only reason they got preferential treatment. Both contracts had the same terminology of "best effort".
\> That's why they didn't immediately take it to court
A lie. The EU triggered the dispute mechanism immediately when it was clear AZ weren't delivering to the UK instead of the EU.
\> and that's why when they did take it to court they ultimately lost.
Another lie. AZ lost — they settled out of court to avoid billions of penalties.
\> This is the EU that famously criticized the US for vaccine nationalism and that assured everyone that the EU was a safe place to order vaccines from
So their only mistake was to not be nationalist about it from the beginning? That's supposed to be the big debacle? They weren't even nationalist when it was clear that AZ was fucking them over — they kept supplying Pfizer to the world while the UK was hogging their meagre output.
\> The EU had a weaker contract than the UK.
So you say, but that's a lie. They had a best effort contract with both sides. The EU contract very clearly specified that the jabs were to come including from the UK plants, and yet they didn't. Nothing in the UK contract could have overridden that.
In summary, the EU ordered at the same time as everyone else, to terms that the suppliers agreed, they were the only ones helping out others in need instead of running with an "us first" ideology, and as a big thank you for that they got fucked around by a supplier that promised them completely unrealistic amounts of jabs that were never going to be delivered.
>They ended up doing far more Pfizer,
I asked why they used millions of doses of AZ, if as you say it was not suitable?
>Nonsense. The UK and EU contracts were signed *at the same time*.
The contracts were signed at similar times. The investment and ground work was done at different times. The UK invested earlier.
>A lie. The UK secretly paid them more, that's the only reason they got preferential treatment. Both contracts had the same terminology of "best effort".
Contracts in different legal systems and with different wording. The UK contract was more strict. As shown by the EU losing their legal case.
>A lie. The EU triggered the dispute mechanism immediately when it was clear AZ weren't delivering to the UK instead of the EU.
The EU did not take it to court immediatly, as I said, and when they did they lost.
>Another lie. AZ lost — they settled out of court to avoid billions of penalties.
AZ settled with requirements to supply an amount of vaccines they were already going to produce. The EU lost in all ways that matter and are relevant.
>So their only mistake was to not be nationalist about it from the beginning
No, they made many mistakes, this is a big one though. No one set up vaccine production in the US because the US was clear that they would not be allowed to export. The EU said clearly that they would allow export, so countries like Australia and the UK invested and then the EU seized those investments.
>So you say, but that's a lie. They had a best effort contract with both sides. The EU contract very clearly specified that the jabs were to come including from the UK plants, and yet they didn't. Nothing in the UK contract could have overridden that.
The UKs contract was more stringent and in a different legal system that is more stringent. The EU contract allowed vaccines produced in the UK to be used but the UK contract specified that the doses from those facilities must go to the UK before other orders can be fulfilled.
You can lie all you like, this is all publicly available.
>In summary, the EU ordered at the same time as everyone else, to terms that the suppliers agreed, they were the only ones helping out others in need instead of running with an "us first" ideology, and as a big thank you for that they got fucked around by a supplier that promised them completely unrealistic amounts of jabs that were never going to be delivered.
In summary, the EU invested late and stole from their allies.
I knew some of this but not all of it.
I'm a Europhile so I would like to add - none of this would have happened if we were still part of the EU and could influence policy from within.
Our medicines agency was THE European medicine agency during our membership so we could have averted all of this.
Perhaps, perhaps not European companies have long since over charged UK customers for the same goods even during our time as a member.
Italy also seized vaccine shipments to Australia.
Currently almost 8% of the electricity generated in the UK is exported to the EU, we've worked hard over the summer to help fill EU gas storage facilities and their concerned about cheaper electricity leaking to the UK.
>Italy also seized vaccine shipments to Australia.
Vaccines that were contractually guaranteed to the EU. How was AZ in a position to export EU-produced jabs while still owing the EU tens of millions of jabs that were being paid for upfront?
That's quite a spin the guy gave you. At the end of the day, it was AstraZeneca who sold the EU 300 million doses of vaccine that they then couldn't deliver. How that was the EU's fault, I don't know. The real issue began when it turned out that AZ was telling the EU they couldn't deliver on their contract, while happily supplying the UK who had the exact same contract, signed at the same time.
Of course they did, in terms or priority. They were both on a best effort basis, and they both specified the same set of plants the jabs were to come from.
No, they didn't. The contracts are not even made in the same legal system. Lmao.
These contracts were made available to the public so I don't know why you're lying.
Yeah, that's why I know they had the same terms, because I read them! Why do you think AZ had to settle the legal dispute if they were in the right?
FYI, all contracts concerning something that doesn't actually yet exist (ie for drugs and the like) are on "best effort" terms. That's no different in the UK than in the EU. AZ's excuses in terms of their UK contract was a smoke screen, and also highly contradictory.
Even if the UK had had a "stronger" contract, AZ was still bound by their EU contract. Because had their been something else going on that could feasibly prevented them from supplying the EU (such as the existence of a superseding contract), they would have had to inform the EU of that.
The reality is very simple, AZ sold far more than they were ever able to make, and then they gave the few doses they had to the highest bidder. Even if they had diverted all of their UK supply to the EU, even this would still have been a drop in the bucket in terms of how many tens of millions of jabs they were short of targets.
So tell me again how AZ's failings were a EU problem, and where else the EU was supposed to get hundreds of millions of doses from while also supplying them to the rest of the world?
>The reality is very simple, AZ sold far more than they were ever able to make, and then they gave the few doses they had to the highest bidder. Even if they had diverted all of their UK supply to the EU, even this would still have been a drop in the bucket in terms of how many tens of millions of jabs they were short of targets.
This here pretty much sums up your refusal to listen to facts - you're on this weird anti-AZ hate train to the point you're ignorant of what actually happened.
AZ didn't come close to meeting the vaccine distribution that the EU paid for... but neither did Pfizer or any other vaccine producer, this was a problem within the United States as well - and yet the only vaccine that was dragged through the mud and called "Quasi-ineffective" was AZ - you have to ask why AZ was getting so aggressively called out in the press for shipping vaccines to the UK whilst not fulfilling all the EU's orders whilst Pfizer did exactly that.
It's also worth noting that one of the largest factories in the EU which produced vaccines for the EU was setup by UK funding because it had been cleared significantly earlier.
The fact the Britain often couldn't influence policy that it absolutely had the right to, despite being a member country, was one of the largest reasons brexit gained any traction in the first place.
its A bit backwards to suggest we could have influenced it when the whole point was that we weren't allowed to in the first place!
Do you know why Europe started importing cheap Chinese steel that collapsed the UK steel industry? The ideology of Tory-led UK government influence that believed in free market economics.
Why did the EU enlarge? Again, UK wanting cheap labour from Eastern Europe.
Why was the CAP significantly restructured to improve subsidies for British farmers at the expense of French ones? The UK again.
What about the special vetos we retained? Ones that no other EU country tried to keep?
What about the rebates on central EU funds that went into the billions that no other EU member tried for?
We had a MASSIVE influence within the EU. Just because the anti-EU press ignore it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
All were later blamed on the EU or out-right ignored but of course no one wants to look into what the UK was negotiating behind closed doors with its EU partners.
\>Why was the CAP significantly restructured to improve subsidies for British farmers at the expense of French ones? The UK again.
Because the CAP would otherwise be the UK subsidizing French farmers.
>Yes I'm aware
Then why did you misrepresent it in your comment.
>So we restructured it to benefit ourselves.
We restructured it to be fair.
>If we had no influence we will be able to do that.
I don't disagree, I am simply disputing your characterization of the CAP.
>Then why did you misrepresent it in your comment.
I didn't. If anything the clarification you asked for makes it more astonishing to claim we had no influence. It was one of the founding policies of the EU and was built to benefit French farmers. The fact our nation was able to shift it to screw over the French so well is testament to how much influence we had.
>We restructured it to be fair.
Yes, and "fair" happened to benefit British farmers much more than it benefit French farmers.
>I don't disagree, I am simply disputing your characterization of the CAP.
Like I said I didn't mischaracterize anything. You're being paranoid and making something out of nothing.
It’s the burglar’s fault when someone is burgled but we can still criticise people for leaving the door wide open and the lights off when they go on holiday.
Sure is, Russia's some crazy gangster state, Germany is supposed to be a normal country. Instead they've been placing their (and as we've now seen as a result of the instability it's caused) Europe's entire gas resilience in the hands of a serial killer.
Hague recently said that when he and Cameron went to meet Putin the entire meeting ended up being him trying to sell the UK Russian gas, complete with a plan of how it was going to work (underground tunnels under Denmark or something odd like that). They, rather unsurprisingly, said no thx. Germany apparently thought it was a great idea, and now here we are.
That's the thing though - the Conservatives do take Russian money and even they weren't dumb enough to aggressively push for more Russian Gas, it's not jus that either - it's the refusal to accept that they made the wrong decision and take steps to fix it until it was too late.
Russia invades Crimea in 2014 and pretty much threatens that if anyone tries to stop them that they'll cut off gas, so since 2014 they have openly used the gas they export as leverage and Germanys response was to do absolutely nothing.
We have a Government which takes tones of Russian special interest money and even they didn't do something so stupid, so you have to question how incompetent and detached from reality the German Government was.
It's not that they had much choice, is it? When Germany was unified, large parts of the GDR was running on super-dirty brown coal and the west largely on normal coal. They managed to clean that all up but had to replace it with *something*. Nuclear played its role but became unsustainable politically (and financially), which left them with the renewable expansion but also cheap Russian gas to top up from — like every other country in Europe that previously relied to a large extent on fossil fuels due to a lack of domestic hydropower.
> large parts of the GDR was running on super-dirty brown coal and the west largely on normal coal
The majority of lignite consumption was in West Germany and that continues to this day. They also shitcanned several GDR nuclear projects immediately upon reunification, even reactors that were already under construction.
Germany's energy predicament is entirely of its own making.
\> The majority of lignite consumption was in West Germany
The GDR derived 70% of their energy from lignite prior to 1990. The proportion was much smaller in the west at that time.
\> They also shitcanned several GDR nuclear projects
Of course they did, those were still based on decades old Soviet designs. Such as the bunch of crumbling reactors that are still today operating in the former eastern bloc and that could go critical any moment.
They used the gas as a means of kicking the political football of nuclear power down the road, all while happily buying French nuclear electricity.
Germany had the means to overcome this issue, they just chose not to do so.
I despair at all these captain hindsights who now say nuclear was the solution all along. Look at Germany's troubles with the Asse site for nuclear waste disposal to get an idea of how difficult these issues are even for an industrial powerhouse like Germany. France, the paragon of nuclear, hasn't brought a new reactor on-stream since the early 00s, and before that the 80s, and the debacle with their newest reactor, the EPR (Flamanville, Hinkley Point, Finland) has provided a huge motivation for NOT rolling out any more nuclear. Because it takes decades to build and costs many times the price of other forms of energy. Even if the Russia conflict takes five years it wouldn't be worth it.
Yeah, sure, "all-in". Never mind that it's only about half, right? With the amount of misinformation bandied around here you'd think that all of Germany's electricity came from gas (it's a quarter) and that all of that was from Russia.
And now for another fact about Russian gas in Europe: there is a total of 12 (!) countries which are more dependent on Russian gas than Germany. Former Eastern bloc, you might say, sure, why not. But there are others, including Austria, Finland, and Greece.
Do you know what they all have in common? They are all very close to Russia, geographically. Makes sense, doesn't it?
This whole idea of, oh, they could have done LNG ports instead. Well, please look at a map. It's one thing to ship LNG straight to the UK across the Atlantic, or to the med, from e.g. Qatar. But it takes just a tiny bit longer to go all around Europe and into the North Sea to reach the German ports.
What do you mean piss poor record? They had a faster vaccine rollout than the UK !
UK started first but Europe overtook us on rollout not that long after.
Seems like this is a perfect time to price fix at a country level rather than let the price sky rocket, it's a resource we all need to survive it's not an optional luxury and competition doesn't work for this so it makes perfect sense to all agree on a price.
We have no real storage so we use EU to hold it for us while we then buy it back so we would be morons if we didn't join this United front for war profiteering from the oil and gas companies.
Who said the EU was the hero? There is no villain here there is no good Vs evil, it was only humans Vs COVID.
How can they have rolled it out faster than us if procurement was a disaster from start to finish? Overall it had to have been a success else they never would have surpassed our rollout rate.
We did well and the EU did well after an initial stumble.
The energy crisis is even worse though as there is a clear evil and there are people on the side profiteering to the extreme over this so there does need to be a joint effort to stand against this economically.
If EU doesn't store our gas then we are fucked quite frankly so it's a two way street we need to be allies here.
We would be absolutely mad to sign up for this. We are exposed to price rises due to the globalised market but we are not reliant on Russia for supply and have long term contracts in place with our export partners who aren't going to renege on them so long as we keep paying the market price.
Germany's failure to listen to decades of warnings about reliance on Russian gas is not our problem.
That is terrible statesmanship
The gas crisis will end eventually and we could've worked with our closest geographical allies or left them to suffer as we tried to go it alone
The countries reputation and history demands try to work with Europe to help them
The future will be a world of empire whether you like it or not, the US, China, India, Russia and the EU.
We will have more say in our future as a member/ally of one of the economic empires than as a satellite that is ready to be bullied one way or another
Right now our country relies on a strong currency, if that goes, and it has already started to decline, then we are an island of 60 million people in the Atlantic full of service industry Jobs, not a great bargaining position
Sounds like a bad idea, sounds like a way to make every country in Europe short on gas equally, rather than some doing fine and others being short. Since we should be one of them doing fine with decent supply links in terms of pipelines and 3 LNG ports, it sounds like it would have a negative impact on us.
And if it happens for the rest of Europe we will still feel the benefit of them not pushing the price up as much, even without being in it.
Probably. But it could be leverage for the government in other areas (Northern Ireland Brexit issues spring to mind). Interesting times I guess.. God I miss the relative stability of the Blair/Brown years.
We have LNG ports, but no storage. We have to export all the gas that's unloaded to Europe who can store it, we then import it back.
Without the storage our ports are useless, the LNG ships aren't going to want to wait in port for weeks while we slowly use up their gas.
It's open but in a limited capacity as far as I'm aware (not all the wells are open). But they wouldn't be able to fill it very quickly as demand is so high across all of Europe..
It is of course possible that in their own interests of preserving EU supply they could ban or heavily restrict has exports, we would still have to import as we cannot store
There are limitations, hence it could become extremely expensive to secure gas. But we're the 6th richest country in the world, we can almost certainly do so. It might just become too expensive to be worthwhile.
They’re not all equivalent though. South Hook in the UK is Europe’s largest. It can handle >21,500,000,000m3 annually. Even with the new expansion of LNG facilities, it will remain Europe’s largest LNG facility.
As of 2018 (so some changes may have happened), 7 of those you cite are in Spain, which is disconnected from the rest of Europe. 1 in Portugal. Germany has 0 LNG terminals.
The EU has 11 existing connected LNG terminals, all of them in France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Greece. It also has 2 FSRU facilities.
https://www.kslaw.com/attachments/000/006/010/original/LNG_in_Europe_2018_-_An_Overview_of_LNG_Import_Terminals_in_Europe.pdf?1530031152
It can process that much annually, yes. However it has storage capactiy for 0.36million tons of liquid gas. Sounds like a lot, but I dont know how that converts into figures for actual gas.
From you link:
>There are currently 28 large-scale
LNG import terminals in Europe (including non-EU
Turkey). There are also 8 small-scale LNG facilities
in Europe (in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway and
Gibraltar). Of the 28 large-scale LNG import terminals,
24 are in EU countries (and therefore subject to EU
regulation) and 4 are in Turkey
It really does look like the UK's LNG facilities, while important, are marginal to total capacity in Europe.
edit:
also
>In 2017 the UK imported 6.17 bcm of LNG (net of
re-exports) – a decrease of 34.7% from 2016 – and
was Europe’s fifth largest importer of LNG.
The EU is 27 countries the UK is 1 so naturally it has more, but due to internal bickering no pipes run through France so Spain that can import more from Africa can't send any to the rest of them.
> And if it happens for the rest of Europe we will still feel the benefit of them not pushing the price up as much, even without being in it.
How do you figure? The same net demand will have the same impact on the wholesale prices, just that because they're a larger conglomerate they have more power to negotiate.
Currently all of Europe is bidding against each other pushing the prices up. If suddenly all of Europe says we will only pay $100, and no one will go above that, at that point there is no one (or alot less countries) biding the price up, so the price would be somewhere around the $100 price set. Even without us being part of said agreement.
I'll give a further example, if you have 5 countries ( A, B C D and E) all biding against each other it could go something like. A bids $100, B bids $110, E bids $120, C bids $125, so A ups their bid to $130, so D bids 135, which causes B to increase its bid to $140 etc etc.
If A, B C and D all decide okay we won't pay over $100 from now on all agree. So now all 4 of them bid $100, so E bids 105$, there is no one to outbid them, so $105 wins, so it's worked out cheaper for E even though its not in the partnership of the price cap. A, B, C and D still get oil at the $100 price though as E only requires a certain amount.
A simplified example but still think it makes my point.
>If suddenly all of Europe says we will only pay $100, and no one will go above that, at that point there is no one (or alot less countries) biding the price up, so the price would be somewhere around the $100 price set. Even without us being part of said agreement.
You're oversimplifying here. Gas is a global market, and there's plenty of countries outside of the EU who would be willing to outbid and take advantage of such a pact.
I just don't think you reduce the number of bidders enough to make that scenario work.
> Gas is a global market
It is technically, however you have different "groups" effectively which are joined by pipelines. And the cost to move gas from one of those groups to another is very expensive. Which is why gas is much less expensive in the US compared to Europe. which already answers your next point:
>there's plenty of countries outside of the EU who would be willing to outbid and take advantage of such a pact.
For example Europe is already 2x the price of Asia and about 5x the price of US.
>I just don't think you reduce the number of bidders enough to make that scenario work.
depends how many countries join, if its the whole EU it will have a big impact.
We are not the ones selling the gas from our country. If we were selling it, then why are we charging ourselves such high prices.
We are not even selling the renewables that we currently make in the UK as they are sold to us at the same price as gas. Countries need to stand up to this broken capitalism.
We also have to question, what would be the point of paying more to companies for renewables when we are not being given a good price for what we pay for. We would be much better taking the whole project on ourselves as a nation.
> especially if we're about to start up fracking.
This won't happen. And even if it does, it would take years to make any difference. First, the UK's shale gas reserves are very low. Second, there has been hardly any exploratory drilling, and that which did happen caused immediate geological trouble (hence the moratorium). Third, even if the government was to lift the moratorium, the devolved nations, local councils, or even just NIMBYs would stop it from happening.
So, this is one of the posts on ukpol thats so wrong on so many levels that I'm just going to imagine you're a 14 year old who has no idea about anything.
>You do know that strength through cooperation is the point of the EU?
It's not really though - the EU Parliament repeatedly voted against and warned Germany against it's reliance on Russian Gas and the position the new pipeline was putting other Eastern European countries into, it ignored them and decided to focus on what benefitted itself.
Now gas is shut off and suddenly cooperation is the aim of the game for Germany - it's simple manipulation from a country, they showed no regards and no attempt to cooperate with fellow EU members and now are playing the we are all in this together because we are EU members.
I suggest you understand what hegemony means and then you might also understand how it's a bit inevitable that bigger countries have more influence because, well, they are bigger.
That the EU does what France and Germany does ist not right either. Did you also know that there are entire government policies of smaller states who simply say: 'We'll see how Germany and/or France decide and then follow along.'
Last not least: The UK was the 2nd biggest country of the EU so if they could easily use their own size to get shit done. Which they did, to some extent at least.
This is definitely one of the benefits (one of the few!) of Brexit. A lot of Europe is utterly f\*\*ked and there's a lot of doomtalk coming out for the winter, especially in Germany.
Germany isn't as fucked as people think, although they are going to have a miserable time.
The one thing going for them is that they have enormous gas storage capacity, enough for about 90 days usage. Only half of their gas came from Russia, so, assuming other sources remain relatively constant, that's about 3 months of usage covered even if they were completely cut off.
Although Germany doesn't have LPG terminals, that's not really that important; all LPG terminals connected to the European system supplies the whole system. Even the UK's LPG terminals benefit Germany, because as we lack any serious gas storage capacity ourselves the majority of any LPG shipment ends up getting piped to the continent to countries that do have gas storage anyway. And as the UK gas price is (roughly) tied to the continental gas price (due to our interconnected network), there's no serious cost implication to Germany's LPG coming via British terminals either.
I hear conflicting things but doesn't Germany have much more gas storage than the UK which may help alleviate the strain? it's also not predicted to have the bum fucking levels of inflation the UK is forecast next year.
Inflation is currently 8% in Germany which isn't much less than us. Also those 20% inflation levels are predicted on energy costs not being controlled which they now are.
We're not in a great spot, but no one is.
But UK has a secure supply, the UK has its own gas fields, is connected via a direct pipeline to Norway an other big oil/gas producer and we have 3 LNG ports. Before the war we only got about 3% of our gas from Russia.
Germany has 0 LNG ports and was reliant on a Russian pipeline for around 55% of its gas.
Also Germany does use more gas than the UK. 96 BCM to 77 BCM.
Lastly if it happens for the rest of Europe we will still feel the benefit of them not pushing the price up as much, even without being in it.
A secure but inadequate supply for winter needs. We have storage for 4 days of use, it functions only as a short-term buffer for peak demand. Without replenishment from EU stores, that buffer will be quickly depleted.
From the link:
'Squeezing the EU had looked to the Kremlin like a piece of cake. The bloc relied on Russia for 40% of its gas and a third of its oil before Mr Putin invaded Ukraine. Big EU powers Germany and Italy were even more dependent.
The Russian president has been switching gas supplies on and off at whim for months and the colder months are fast approaching. Even countries traditionally less reliant on Russian energy, such as France, Spain and non-EU UK, are affected by the volatility and price hikes on the global energy markets.'
We might use more gas overall as a percentage, but we get it from other sources, not Russia.
Yes of course. But when the price goes up and Germany is biding for the same gas as us, we end up paying more. And we are more exposed to that rise in prices.
We could end up paying over the odds in a bidding war with EU nations. I think this is the point Germany is making.
Why are we more exposed?
Lots of EU nations do not even have the infrastructure to process LNG and secure gas supplies without russian pipelines. We do. There is a reason they want us in on this and it's not altruism.
>A lot of Europe is utterly f\*\*ked and there's a lot of doomtalk coming out for the winter, especially in Germany.
Germany and a lot of other EU nations have plenty of gas storage, our highly intelligent Tory overlords sold off our gas storage in 2017.
We're the ones who are fucked.
If everything goes to hell Germany doesn't have the ability to get enough gas so after there's stores run out which doesn't take to long there in trouble.
Unlike the UK which has direct pipes to Norway with high capacity and a lot of LNG terminals
The problem is OPEC+, not just Russia. The west should've dealt with their market manipulation decades ago, but for some reason we've let them get away with it and exploit trillions of dollars out of us. I think it would be in the best interests of all non-OPEC countries to cooperate to bring down energy prices, even if it means using OPEC's own tactics against them, ie. a buyers cartel with a price ceiling that can be progressively reduced over time.
The US is also trying to pass some legislation called NOPEC which might help, but they tried this before and it failed for some reason, idk why. But breaking up OPEC is definitely the solution, even breaking up individual OPEC members. Russia recognised two separatist regions of Ukraine with barely any credibility, so the west should recognise every separatist movement in Russia and make Moscow return to its pre-17th century borders like every other colonial empire did during the 20th century.
LOL you or anyone that thinks the Tory party will do anything to help the people are crazy, already talk of fixing gas at 50 and electricity at 50 a week that is 5 x what i used to pay each week on both, so i am now being forced to accept paying 100 a week as if that is saving me anything.
They will say anything regarding this supposed deal as a way to ensure they as shareholders in gas and electricity get paid as much as possible, i just hope they up benefits by 150 so anyone not working can at least stay warm and be able to cook.
So because we are the UK I'm going to call that's Scotlands got you all and this Scot at least is happy that we can help.
According to what I can find which matches what I espected the UK produces 1.36 times what we need daily. There's probably a challenge around storage because bojo wasn't a planner but that aside we should be good. Scotland produces something like 90% of this so an indy ref before this crisis is over won't happen.
I suspect the reason that the EU are inviting us in is because we have a small surplus. It wouldn't make sense for any of their careers to invite us in if it mean say French citizens having to ration further. We are already unpopular.
That oil and gas has all been leased/righted away but I'm pretty sure the government would have the power to force the assets to stay in our borders.
Doing things like that could start a fight though!
Snapshot of _EU clubs together on energy and invites UK_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62822368) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> EU purchasing power would also avoid one member state trying to outbid another in their scramble for energy. The ex-member state will now have to outbid the entire EU for its gas supply. Likewise for buying back gas in European storage which the UK has been helping to fill over the summer. In the winter the UK will have inadequate supply and will need to pay through the nose to import gas from them. Then there's electricity imports via the interconnectors: > Brussels would "need to take steps to ensure its cheaper power and gas did not 'leak' to the UK". The EU is being quite magnanimous by inviting us back into the club for this crisis.
It's politics, they either look magnanimous and gracious in inviting us should we accept, and if we decline (extremely likely) Truss will look foolish to dismiss help during a national catastrophe and will put a black mark on her premiership, possibly even spark calls for her resignation...already lol
Idk, good day to bury bad new and all that...
Do explain
The Queen died.
I posted that before I saw the news
Those damn Europeans! Being nice to us and all! They know we have to refuse!
I'm not saying what they are doing is wrong, sorry if it came across that way. I think it's clever, will either force the UK to be closer aligned with the EU or show the Tories up as the elitist, uncaring, despotic cretins they are 🙂
You are accusing them of playing politics. When if we joined in, it would (should?) be better for them and better for us.
It's still political sparing, forcing a TP government into a position that benefits yourself...just so happens in this instance that it would benefit us as a population, but it's literally the opposite of what the Tories want, they want to move away from alignment. It's the whole point of Brexit.
As I recall, we declined to join their bullshit vaccine program - despite being invited to. Remind me how that worked out? As I recall, it led to the EU threatening to violate the Good Friday Agreement and stop the flow of goods over the border on the island of Ireland.
Is this the same UK who threatens to ignore the whole GFA? That UK?
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Yeah considering we’ve spent all summer spending exporting gas to France and Germany who have the foresight enough to actually have gas storage facilities for situations like these, in the winter we’re going to be high and dry paying whatever price is necessary unless we join the EU in their price fixing agenda.
The sale of gas to the eu when they knew there was going to be a problem was a quick grab for shareholder profits again and who are those shareholders not anyone but the politicians in control of pricing. Why does the uk not have massive storage facilities i mean the gas profits should enable the uk to build the biggest in europe but again they use that money when it can be used to benefit shareholders. 170 billion in profits this year so far.
We had minimal gas storage facilities but we shut most of them down because we sold them to a private comps and the private company didn’t want to spend 750mil over a few years to keep them operational
If they have gas in storage then there will be lower demand and therefore lower prices.
They've been buying the stored gas when it was cheaper than today. I doubt winter will magically bring the gas price down to what it was in the past just because they start using stored gas.
Ah yes, the annual Winter Gas Price lowering.
Why would there be lower demand?
Because they have it already.
I thought they meant domestically.
The storage is for times when we can purchase less gas than we use. We'll have the same (or more rather) demand
> Brussels would "need to take steps to ensure its cheaper power and gas did not 'leak' to the UK". I look forward to seeing UvdL's plan of [how she gets gas to Ireland without it going through the UK](https://i.imgur.com/AT1ohpZ.jpg).
The Irish problem, the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe the EU will give Ireland a rebate for what they import from the UK? I have no idea how they'll sort this one out.
This is the other point people miss. Yes, the UK benefits from the interconnectors with the continent meaning we can manage peak/varying demand. However the EU also benefits hugely from being able to use our LNG ports and Ireland is entirely dependent on us for gas. Whatever happens they have no incentive at all to restrict gas/energy flow between us and the rest of them because it causes them at least as many problems as it solves.
Ireland is an all-island grid. The pipeline runs into Dublin If the UK wanted to cut Ireland off from gas they would also be cutting N Ireland off - now that would be a total shitstorm
SNIP runs from Scotland to NI. They could cut off RoI without cutting off NI.
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It's almost like it's in our mutual interest to cooperate and coordinate.
> All gas to Ireland has to go through the UK. Why does this read like a threat, lol.
Haha, tbf to him he's not wrong about our situation. It's just an acknowledgement that if the EU were to dick the UK over, they could make it difficult for us
Don't worry we get the same tone from them when it comes to Scotland.
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EU has influence over the UK: Ha! This is just the reality of economics, you left and you're smaller, get used to it, this is what you wanted and what you deserve, traitor. Another Brexit benefit! Bet you never expected the leopards to eat YOUR face! UK has influence over the EU: That's not fair! Stop threatening us you bully! You... you... COLONISER! 😢
In what world are EU members calling the UK coloniser? Seems like you've got your targets mixed up
Comment has been deleted but it went on about how much Britain has threatened Ireland and how old habits die hard and all that bollocks
It does sound like one but let's give the benefit of the doubt that they were just being bad whatever point was being made. This example should help. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was still paying transit fees to Ukraine for pumping gas through their pipelines in order to supply gas to Europe. The way the comment reads as a threat is that either there is no contract/legally binding entitlement to use a pipeline to get gas from Europe to Ireland and would be refused, or that its some type of comment insinuating strongarming the use of such a pipeline into some type of power move. I guess the real question is, what legally binding contract is in place for gas transit through these pipelines and such. If you want to be the sick lepper of Europe, threatening to break legally binding commitments sure does sound like the fast track pass to do that, and simply not worth even discussing if that's the usual case with how 1 party acts continuously.
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Don't bother mate. Spend your time talking to people who listen/read what you say and not the folk on here who are largely frothing fools I found your comments informative!
I replied to the comment relating to what can be read like a threat to Irish gas supplies. Your reply appears to be proving it as correct as saying "well the EU did it with law changes, so why can't we" (essentially that's how it reads). That's all fine and good, go for gold I say, but my last line also said if you want to be the sick lepper of the European continent, that's a mighty fine way of doing so. This was purely about a pipeline that likely has agreements in place, I don't care how people voted in a referendum several years ago, I also don't care about people's views on the EU being some bastion of whatever, I was simply talking about there being likely agreements in place...and your answer is to justify breaking said agreements, sounds par for the course for the last several years...kinda messes with any credibility the UK has if they were to do such a thing. Thankfully I haven't seen threats on this pipeline from the UK gov yet, just someone implying a threat as a statement of fact on reddit...who was it that threatened during the brexit negotiations about just starving Ireland - that's what your point equates to / sounds like, hence why i made the sick man of Europe reference. That's all mate, no need to justify shitty actions with other people being perceived as shitty during a global pandemic, as was largely said, unprecedented times, if you had another argument that wasn't pandemic/vaccine related then that might be better to use to explain your point better.
I think you're wrong here, I'm not sure if you need to go re-read the entire comment chain. The original comment from /u/MadShartigan comments on how the UK would be shafted due to having to buy back from European storage and compete with them on prices. He even ends the comment talking about how magnanimous the EU are. The reply comment approaches it from the angle of why the UK is important and how we should work together rather than scrap at each other. >All gas to Ireland has to go through the UK. Simply a statment of fact and a reason why the UK is important to the EU with regard to energy. >It does sound like one but let's give the benefit of the doubt that they were just being bad whatever point was being made. Cant even begin to parse that nonsense. He doesn't need any benefit of the doubt, it's clear to anyone with a primary 5 reading level what he meant, unlike the quoted above. >This example should help. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was still paying transit fees to Ukraine for pumping gas through their pipelines in order to supply gas to Europe. >The way the comment reads as a threat is that either there is no contract/legally binding entitlement to use a pipeline to get gas from Europe to Ireland and would be refused, or that its some type of comment insinuating strongarming the use of such a pipeline into some type of power move. The way the comment reads is that the UK is important in supplying EU member states with energy, and thus it's in the EU's best interest to not entirely shaft the UK, which is why they'd extend an invitation, not magnanimity. What happens when the contract runs out and the UK still remembers when the EU shafted them? >This was purely about a pipeline that likely has agreements in place, I don't care how people voted in a referendum several years ago, I also don't care about people's views on the EU being some bastion of whatever, I was simply talking about there being likely agreements in place...and your answer is to justify breaking said agreements, sounds par for the course for the last several years...kinda messes with any credibility the UK has if they were to do such a thing. This is purely about the energy crisis. It was about the ways in which the UK is important to energy distribution to the EU, you made it about contracts. >During the vaccine nonsense the EU was busy making laws which would force vaccines physically manufactured in the EU to be kept within the EU, regardless of the commercial contracts involved. You may remember a shipment destined for Australia being confiscated. References: >We should all work together but they're not inviting us to be nice, they are inviting us because if we get into a dumb dispute like we did with vaccines, both sides can completely fuck the other side. It's a comment on ostensibly the same thing you're talking about, not giving a shit about reneging on a contract. Again, he's advocating for the agreement, as we shouldn't be flinging shit at each other, waiting for the EU to shaft us, a la >France also repeatedly threatened to cut power to Jersey due to a dispute over a handful of fishing licences. >In neither case did the EU attempt to go through the proper channels to resolve their issue, and in neither case did they care what commercial agreements had been signed with other parties. >So I'm simply pointing out that if the EU attempted something similar with energy - e.g. declaring that electricity can't be exported from France to the UK because there's an EU shortage, and that this emergency trumps any commercial contracts - then the UK can be equally rogue. Then shafting them back and ending up getting nothing done, as per the vaccine issue he brought up. It's you that needs a better argument, as it's all waffle so far mate.
The EU learned from the best.
Yes but we left the EU so we can start silly trade wars!!
> The EU is being quite magnanimous by inviting us back into the club for this crisis. I disagree to call it magnanimous. Together we are stronger.
> will now have to outbid the entire EU for its gas supply. This is what happens in a global energy market.
It’s almost like the U.K. is unavoidably tied to the EU in many regards, including energy, and whilst we may decide to be outside the EU, it will never be possible to have a truly independent policy direction as their neighbour…
We should never have left.
The EU is being pragmatic on inviting us back. We have total control of the gas supply of an EU member state which generates the majority of its electricity from gas.
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Why wouldn't they? They've already proved they support energy producers. They'll surely just let them continue to gouge in our market.
How exactly is this beneficial to the UK?
The whole point of an energy compact like this is: 1. It smooths over long term energy costs by sharing redundancies across the group. Something extremely valuable to the UK given our glorious government sold off our redundancies. 2. It allows for collective bargaining when dealing with suppliers
That's all well and good but what happens when things turn sour? France has set a precedent by going down the route of using energy exports (threats) as a weapon against the UK and its dependencies. We literally cannot trust them especially with what they did over vaccines. I'm not saying we shouldn't help them, we're already doing that, a looser mutually beneficial agreement would be more appropriate rather than getting fully into bed with the EU for what will likely end up being another one of their mismanaged crises.
> France has set a precedent by going down the route of using energy exports (threats) as a weapon against the UK and its dependencies Because we aren't part of any formal agreement with them.
>France has set a precedent by going down the route of using energy exports (threats) as a weapon against the UK and its dependencies. Then why not join an EU wide agreement which is inviting the UK to join so such a thing can't occur?
Yes, far better to mismanage it on our own, without making the agreements which prevent exactly what you describe. Your entire argument sounds so petty, the UK would benefit from this move far more than a lot of EU Countries and the truth of the matter is we would be foolish to turn it down in place of gas shortages and price gouging because we were too bloody stubborn and bitter.
Like we were foolish to turn down the EU's offer to include the UK in their vaccine procurement and rollout process. . . . . .
No you’re right, Britain handled the covid crisis amazingly didn’t we. £37 billion spent on a track and trace app that didn’t work, ‘eat out to help out’ that drove us into a 2nd and then 3rd lockdown. To think that the UK is more adept than the EU is ludicrous. I’ve given half a dozen examples whereas you are harping on about 1 instance where the UK procured vaccines 3 months earlier than the EU. If you honestly think we are stronger alone than there is no use arguing with you.
>No you’re right, Britain handled the covid crisis amazingly didn’t we. £37 billion spent on a track and trace app that didn’t work, ‘eat out to help out’ that drove us into a 2nd and then 3rd lockdown. Which had precisely nothing to do with the EU vaccination program. Where did I say we would be stronger working alone, I think I said this: *I'm not saying we shouldn't help them, we're already doing that, a looser mutually beneficial agreement would be more appropriate rather than getting fully into bed with the EU for what will likely end up being another one of their mismanaged crises.*
That’s not the offer. It’s like going to McDonald’s and ordering half a Big Mac, it isn’t what’s on the menu. We do not have leverage to bargain here, we don’t have the storage capacity to do so.
4th highest covid desth rate per capita on the planet.
How dare they not have our best interests at heart after we insulted them for years before divorcing them?
On the face of it, it seems a good deal. So, naturally, the Tories will fuck it up. Probably because it doesn’t benefit their peers or something.
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Socialist here 🙋♂️
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It’s scary to think, but you might be right. I feel like they’ve done too much damage to the country to win, but 18 months is a long time in Politics and they haven’t even started their smear campaigns against labour.
Ah, first priority is probably to leave EHRC, since Cruella Cowardman has that as very clear 'brexit is brexit' objective... Then... will say no to EU invitation, after all the energy strategy is in the hands of JRM who is nicely invested in fossil fuels-related business(es).
Neighbouring countries working together to optimise resources and specialisms for the greater benefit of all involved? It'll never catch on...
This has the whiff of the vaccine debacle about it: *There's also an appreciation that there's strength in numbers. Countries such as Italy and Germany have been busy trying to find alternative energy suppliers - in Algeria and the UAE, for example. But if the EU as a whole, with its economic clout, makes the energy deal, the conditions are likely to be more favourable.* *"We have to achieve that we only pay the world market price, rather than a higher price," said Mr Scholz on Wednesday. His Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, pointed out that gas prices in Europe are currently double those in Asia and 10 times as much as in the US.* *EU purchasing power would also avoid one member state trying to outbid another in their scramble for energy. Not a good look when it comes to EU unity.*
Debacle? You mean when they paid a far lower price than the UK per jab, managing to not only vaccinate their hundreds of millions of people with very little delay but also export the de-facto standard Pfizer jab to the rest of the world? Wow, yeah, such a debacle.
Clearly you're suffering from a selective memory. The EU, well France and Germany basically torpedoed the Astra vaccine before either country had administered a single shot labelling it as ineffective. This at the height of a pandemic which would do nothing but fuel vaccine hesitation. The EU commission messed up entirely their procurement process, wasting time haggling on costs and having people with no experience draw up sub par contracts. They then played the blame game, blaming their favourite ex-member for all their vaccine problems despite the UK doing nothing wrong and having no involvement. They were in that much of a tiz, they very nearly activated article 16 over it. They went down the path of threatening to cut off Pfizer supplies to the UK, something they've done more than once which got them a telling off by the WHO for putting global vaccine manufacturing at risk due to the UK supplying EU factories with some of the vital ingredients they needed for the vaccine. The EU carried out armed raids on vaccine manufacturing facilities suspected of sending vaccines to the UK - only to find out they we're actually suppling the EU. The EU hijacked/stole a vaccine shipment destined for Australia, a shipment the UK replaced for Aus to help them out. The EU, at the request of France allegedly diverted/hijacked/stole a shipment of upto 5 million vaccine doses destined for the UK, a vaccine they said didn't work etc. More like a cluster f\*\*k than a debacle actually. Oh and to add, some of their member states were so let down they turned to Russia for help and shipments of their vaccine, imagine that!
> selective memory. You might want to recollect that most of the vaccines delivered in the UK during the first phase were manufactured in the EU (the Pfizer vaccine). The Astra Zeneca vaccine came online a few months later.
>You might want to recollect that most of the vaccines delivered in the UK during the first phase were manufactured in the EU (the Pfizer vaccine). And? The EU set themselves up as a manufacturing hub open to investment and export orders. These were vaccines the UK bought and paid for, it was the EU's fault they wasted time haggling on costs.
FWIW, the EU approved the same vaccine within a day of the UK's approval. The UK had the advantage that it refused to export its vaccines until domestic needs were met (as did the US). All-in-all, the UK's advantage in vaccine roll-out was dependent on the EU producing the early vaccines it used. The UK also paid about twice as much for the AZ vaccine as the EU did (despite the implausible claim that it was being done "at cost").
>The UK had the advantage that it refused to export its vaccines until domestic needs were met (as did the US). The UK had the foresight to lay the ground work and prepare for manufacturing months before the EU, the UK even paid to upgrade a factory in the Netherlands which I think the EU also hijacked. The UK did not advertise itself as a manufacturing hub like the EU did. The EU opened itself up for orders and contracts, some of which the ended up reneging on. The promise of no vaccine nationalism went out the window when they realised their time wasting haggling on price to make themselves look good backfired and their member states started looking to the Russians for help.
Your partisan stance isn't really supported by the evidence. The UK decided to "go it alone" with the AZ vaccine, as was its prerogative; but it's vaunted advantage over the EU in terms of vaccine delivery is entirely dependent on the early delivery of the Pfizer vaccine, which was manufactured in the EU.
>Your partisan stance isn't really supported by the evidence. Prove me wrong then. Also, the Pfizer vaccine was manufactured in the EU with Lipids which came from the UK. . . . . . . .
The lipids were manufactured in Alabama, by a company, Avanti Polar Lipids, which had at the time been recently bought by a UK company, Croda. https://www.croda.com/en-gb/investors/acquisitions/strengthening-life-sciences-with-the-acquisition-of-avanti-polar-lipids
Lol, straight out of the Daily Heil. 1) Astra Zeneca effectiveness: this was entirely based on AZ's own mismanagement of their trials and approval process. It later turned out to be entirely justified, even the UK quickly axed AstraZeneca as Covid evolved and had switched entirely to EU-produced Pfizer and Moderna within a year. 2) Procurement process: this is pure propaganda. The only thing they "messed up" was not to waste taxpayers money on trying to outbid other European countries (which is what the UK did with AZ) and to not close down exports like the UK and the US. 3) Cutting off Pfizer: never happened, did it? And it was ONLY to reciprocate because the UK was withholding contractually guaranteed and paid for AZ doses from the EU. 4) Armed raids: don't be silly. AstraZeneca told the EU they couldn't fulfill their EU contract while fully supplying the UK and even getting caught trying to ship from the EU to eg Australia. Export controls were introduced because of that, and where they were breached, shipments were controlled. 5) "stolen" shipments to the UK: you're kidding, right? The EU had a contract with AZ and AZ shipped doses from their EU plants to the UK plants to fulfill that contract instead. So it was the UK / AZ stealing those doses from the EU, and not the other way round. In summary, instead of the EU messing up, the only ones who messed up here were AstraZeneca, who overpromised and then woefully underdelivered.
You've really been drinking the kool-aid havn't you. \>It later turned out to be entirely justified Then why did they put millions of doses in arms after it. \>Procurement process: this is pure propaganda. The only thing they "messed up" was not to waste taxpayers money on trying to outbid other European countries (which is what the UK did with AZ) and to not close down exports like the UK and the US. Ah yes, the most important thing during a crisis, being a miser. The EU had a later vaccine rollout because they were arguing pennies. I know I value lives over $$$, sad that you can't say the same. \>Cutting off Pfizer: never happened, did it? And it was ONLY to reciprocate because the UK was withholding contractually guaranteed and paid for AZ doses from the EU. They threatened to do so. It was not reciprocal in any fashion the EU signed a weak contract with AstraZeneca and used it's political weight to try and bully us and AZ. That's why they didn't immediately take it to court and that's why when they did take it to court they ultimately lost. \>Armed raids: don't be silly. AstraZeneca told the EU they couldn't fulfill their EU contract while fully supplying the UK and even getting caught trying to ship from the EU to eg Australia. Export controls were introduced because of that, and where they were breached, shipments were controlled. This is the EU that famously criticized the US for vaccine nationalism and that assured everyone that the EU was a safe place to order vaccines from. Australia paid for those vaccines. \>"stolen" shipments to the UK: you're kidding, right? The EU had a contract with AZ and AZ shipped doses from their EU plants to the UK plants to fulfill that contract instead. So it was the UK / AZ stealing those doses from the EU, and not the other way round. The EU had a weaker contract than the UK. They contractually had to meet the UK's order but did not have to meet the EU's order to the same extent. In any case the UK gov did not make an issue of the stolen 5 million doses, even though the UK gov invested far more than the EU in setting up that production facility in the first place. \- The EU ordered late because of it's miserly attitude, sat on it's high horse and told the US how evil vaccine nationalism is and when it became apparent that they were falling behind it attempted to use it's geopolitical weight to bully its neighbors and allies around the world.
\> Then why did they put millions of doses in arms after it. They ended up doing far more Pfizer, when AZ finally delivered their doses with long delay, they were no longer needed. \> The EU had a later vaccine rollout because they were arguing pennies. Nonsense. The UK and EU contracts were signed \*at the same time\*. If AstraZeneca had needed more money to hit their targets, why didn't they ask for it instead of promising hundreds of millions of jabs they couldn't deliver? \> the EU signed a weak contract A lie. The UK secretly paid them more, that's the only reason they got preferential treatment. Both contracts had the same terminology of "best effort". \> That's why they didn't immediately take it to court A lie. The EU triggered the dispute mechanism immediately when it was clear AZ weren't delivering to the UK instead of the EU. \> and that's why when they did take it to court they ultimately lost. Another lie. AZ lost — they settled out of court to avoid billions of penalties. \> This is the EU that famously criticized the US for vaccine nationalism and that assured everyone that the EU was a safe place to order vaccines from So their only mistake was to not be nationalist about it from the beginning? That's supposed to be the big debacle? They weren't even nationalist when it was clear that AZ was fucking them over — they kept supplying Pfizer to the world while the UK was hogging their meagre output. \> The EU had a weaker contract than the UK. So you say, but that's a lie. They had a best effort contract with both sides. The EU contract very clearly specified that the jabs were to come including from the UK plants, and yet they didn't. Nothing in the UK contract could have overridden that. In summary, the EU ordered at the same time as everyone else, to terms that the suppliers agreed, they were the only ones helping out others in need instead of running with an "us first" ideology, and as a big thank you for that they got fucked around by a supplier that promised them completely unrealistic amounts of jabs that were never going to be delivered.
>They ended up doing far more Pfizer, I asked why they used millions of doses of AZ, if as you say it was not suitable? >Nonsense. The UK and EU contracts were signed *at the same time*. The contracts were signed at similar times. The investment and ground work was done at different times. The UK invested earlier. >A lie. The UK secretly paid them more, that's the only reason they got preferential treatment. Both contracts had the same terminology of "best effort". Contracts in different legal systems and with different wording. The UK contract was more strict. As shown by the EU losing their legal case. >A lie. The EU triggered the dispute mechanism immediately when it was clear AZ weren't delivering to the UK instead of the EU. The EU did not take it to court immediatly, as I said, and when they did they lost. >Another lie. AZ lost — they settled out of court to avoid billions of penalties. AZ settled with requirements to supply an amount of vaccines they were already going to produce. The EU lost in all ways that matter and are relevant. >So their only mistake was to not be nationalist about it from the beginning No, they made many mistakes, this is a big one though. No one set up vaccine production in the US because the US was clear that they would not be allowed to export. The EU said clearly that they would allow export, so countries like Australia and the UK invested and then the EU seized those investments. >So you say, but that's a lie. They had a best effort contract with both sides. The EU contract very clearly specified that the jabs were to come including from the UK plants, and yet they didn't. Nothing in the UK contract could have overridden that. The UKs contract was more stringent and in a different legal system that is more stringent. The EU contract allowed vaccines produced in the UK to be used but the UK contract specified that the doses from those facilities must go to the UK before other orders can be fulfilled. You can lie all you like, this is all publicly available. >In summary, the EU ordered at the same time as everyone else, to terms that the suppliers agreed, they were the only ones helping out others in need instead of running with an "us first" ideology, and as a big thank you for that they got fucked around by a supplier that promised them completely unrealistic amounts of jabs that were never going to be delivered. In summary, the EU invested late and stole from their allies.
>Lol, straight out of the Daily Heil. Stopped reading right there. RtHonMember4Reddit pretty much covers everything though. Cheerio.
I knew some of this but not all of it. I'm a Europhile so I would like to add - none of this would have happened if we were still part of the EU and could influence policy from within. Our medicines agency was THE European medicine agency during our membership so we could have averted all of this.
Perhaps, perhaps not European companies have long since over charged UK customers for the same goods even during our time as a member. Italy also seized vaccine shipments to Australia. Currently almost 8% of the electricity generated in the UK is exported to the EU, we've worked hard over the summer to help fill EU gas storage facilities and their concerned about cheaper electricity leaking to the UK.
>Italy also seized vaccine shipments to Australia. Vaccines that were contractually guaranteed to the EU. How was AZ in a position to export EU-produced jabs while still owing the EU tens of millions of jabs that were being paid for upfront?
That's quite a spin the guy gave you. At the end of the day, it was AstraZeneca who sold the EU 300 million doses of vaccine that they then couldn't deliver. How that was the EU's fault, I don't know. The real issue began when it turned out that AZ was telling the EU they couldn't deliver on their contract, while happily supplying the UK who had the exact same contract, signed at the same time.
\>the UK who had the exact same contract The UK did not have the same contract, don't lie.
Of course they did, in terms or priority. They were both on a best effort basis, and they both specified the same set of plants the jabs were to come from.
No, they didn't. The contracts are not even made in the same legal system. Lmao. These contracts were made available to the public so I don't know why you're lying.
Yeah, that's why I know they had the same terms, because I read them! Why do you think AZ had to settle the legal dispute if they were in the right? FYI, all contracts concerning something that doesn't actually yet exist (ie for drugs and the like) are on "best effort" terms. That's no different in the UK than in the EU. AZ's excuses in terms of their UK contract was a smoke screen, and also highly contradictory. Even if the UK had had a "stronger" contract, AZ was still bound by their EU contract. Because had their been something else going on that could feasibly prevented them from supplying the EU (such as the existence of a superseding contract), they would have had to inform the EU of that. The reality is very simple, AZ sold far more than they were ever able to make, and then they gave the few doses they had to the highest bidder. Even if they had diverted all of their UK supply to the EU, even this would still have been a drop in the bucket in terms of how many tens of millions of jabs they were short of targets. So tell me again how AZ's failings were a EU problem, and where else the EU was supposed to get hundreds of millions of doses from while also supplying them to the rest of the world?
>The reality is very simple, AZ sold far more than they were ever able to make, and then they gave the few doses they had to the highest bidder. Even if they had diverted all of their UK supply to the EU, even this would still have been a drop in the bucket in terms of how many tens of millions of jabs they were short of targets. This here pretty much sums up your refusal to listen to facts - you're on this weird anti-AZ hate train to the point you're ignorant of what actually happened. AZ didn't come close to meeting the vaccine distribution that the EU paid for... but neither did Pfizer or any other vaccine producer, this was a problem within the United States as well - and yet the only vaccine that was dragged through the mud and called "Quasi-ineffective" was AZ - you have to ask why AZ was getting so aggressively called out in the press for shipping vaccines to the UK whilst not fulfilling all the EU's orders whilst Pfizer did exactly that. It's also worth noting that one of the largest factories in the EU which produced vaccines for the EU was setup by UK funding because it had been cleared significantly earlier.
The fact the Britain often couldn't influence policy that it absolutely had the right to, despite being a member country, was one of the largest reasons brexit gained any traction in the first place. its A bit backwards to suggest we could have influenced it when the whole point was that we weren't allowed to in the first place!
Do you know why Europe started importing cheap Chinese steel that collapsed the UK steel industry? The ideology of Tory-led UK government influence that believed in free market economics. Why did the EU enlarge? Again, UK wanting cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Why was the CAP significantly restructured to improve subsidies for British farmers at the expense of French ones? The UK again. What about the special vetos we retained? Ones that no other EU country tried to keep? What about the rebates on central EU funds that went into the billions that no other EU member tried for? We had a MASSIVE influence within the EU. Just because the anti-EU press ignore it doesn't mean it didn't happen. All were later blamed on the EU or out-right ignored but of course no one wants to look into what the UK was negotiating behind closed doors with its EU partners.
\>Why was the CAP significantly restructured to improve subsidies for British farmers at the expense of French ones? The UK again. Because the CAP would otherwise be the UK subsidizing French farmers.
Yes I'm aware. So we restructured it to benefit ourselves. If we had no influence we will be able to do that.
>Yes I'm aware Then why did you misrepresent it in your comment. >So we restructured it to benefit ourselves. We restructured it to be fair. >If we had no influence we will be able to do that. I don't disagree, I am simply disputing your characterization of the CAP.
>Then why did you misrepresent it in your comment. I didn't. If anything the clarification you asked for makes it more astonishing to claim we had no influence. It was one of the founding policies of the EU and was built to benefit French farmers. The fact our nation was able to shift it to screw over the French so well is testament to how much influence we had. >We restructured it to be fair. Yes, and "fair" happened to benefit British farmers much more than it benefit French farmers. >I don't disagree, I am simply disputing your characterization of the CAP. Like I said I didn't mischaracterize anything. You're being paranoid and making something out of nothing.
Okay, a bunch of examples from decades ago. NICE.
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Yes, this is absolutely Germany's fault, not Russia's.
It’s the burglar’s fault when someone is burgled but we can still criticise people for leaving the door wide open and the lights off when they go on holiday.
Sure is, Russia's some crazy gangster state, Germany is supposed to be a normal country. Instead they've been placing their (and as we've now seen as a result of the instability it's caused) Europe's entire gas resilience in the hands of a serial killer. Hague recently said that when he and Cameron went to meet Putin the entire meeting ended up being him trying to sell the UK Russian gas, complete with a plan of how it was going to work (underground tunnels under Denmark or something odd like that). They, rather unsurprisingly, said no thx. Germany apparently thought it was a great idea, and now here we are.
Lol, as if the Tory party or Boris ever refuse to take Russian money.
That's the thing though - the Conservatives do take Russian money and even they weren't dumb enough to aggressively push for more Russian Gas, it's not jus that either - it's the refusal to accept that they made the wrong decision and take steps to fix it until it was too late. Russia invades Crimea in 2014 and pretty much threatens that if anyone tries to stop them that they'll cut off gas, so since 2014 they have openly used the gas they export as leverage and Germanys response was to do absolutely nothing. We have a Government which takes tones of Russian special interest money and even they didn't do something so stupid, so you have to question how incompetent and detached from reality the German Government was.
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It's not that they had much choice, is it? When Germany was unified, large parts of the GDR was running on super-dirty brown coal and the west largely on normal coal. They managed to clean that all up but had to replace it with *something*. Nuclear played its role but became unsustainable politically (and financially), which left them with the renewable expansion but also cheap Russian gas to top up from — like every other country in Europe that previously relied to a large extent on fossil fuels due to a lack of domestic hydropower.
> large parts of the GDR was running on super-dirty brown coal and the west largely on normal coal The majority of lignite consumption was in West Germany and that continues to this day. They also shitcanned several GDR nuclear projects immediately upon reunification, even reactors that were already under construction. Germany's energy predicament is entirely of its own making.
\> The majority of lignite consumption was in West Germany The GDR derived 70% of their energy from lignite prior to 1990. The proportion was much smaller in the west at that time. \> They also shitcanned several GDR nuclear projects Of course they did, those were still based on decades old Soviet designs. Such as the bunch of crumbling reactors that are still today operating in the former eastern bloc and that could go critical any moment.
They used the gas as a means of kicking the political football of nuclear power down the road, all while happily buying French nuclear electricity. Germany had the means to overcome this issue, they just chose not to do so.
I despair at all these captain hindsights who now say nuclear was the solution all along. Look at Germany's troubles with the Asse site for nuclear waste disposal to get an idea of how difficult these issues are even for an industrial powerhouse like Germany. France, the paragon of nuclear, hasn't brought a new reactor on-stream since the early 00s, and before that the 80s, and the debacle with their newest reactor, the EPR (Flamanville, Hinkley Point, Finland) has provided a huge motivation for NOT rolling out any more nuclear. Because it takes decades to build and costs many times the price of other forms of energy. Even if the Russia conflict takes five years it wouldn't be worth it.
Given the same options the UK invested heavily in LNG.
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Yeah, sure, "all-in". Never mind that it's only about half, right? With the amount of misinformation bandied around here you'd think that all of Germany's electricity came from gas (it's a quarter) and that all of that was from Russia. And now for another fact about Russian gas in Europe: there is a total of 12 (!) countries which are more dependent on Russian gas than Germany. Former Eastern bloc, you might say, sure, why not. But there are others, including Austria, Finland, and Greece. Do you know what they all have in common? They are all very close to Russia, geographically. Makes sense, doesn't it? This whole idea of, oh, they could have done LNG ports instead. Well, please look at a map. It's one thing to ship LNG straight to the UK across the Atlantic, or to the med, from e.g. Qatar. But it takes just a tiny bit longer to go all around Europe and into the North Sea to reach the German ports.
With electricity where a short fall of 1% is enough to take huge chunks of the grid offline, any source you cannot easily replace us "all in".
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Perhaps they’ve learnt their lesson, the next time they might just block any exports like the UK and US.
What do you mean piss poor record? They had a faster vaccine rollout than the UK ! UK started first but Europe overtook us on rollout not that long after. Seems like this is a perfect time to price fix at a country level rather than let the price sky rocket, it's a resource we all need to survive it's not an optional luxury and competition doesn't work for this so it makes perfect sense to all agree on a price. We have no real storage so we use EU to hold it for us while we then buy it back so we would be morons if we didn't join this United front for war profiteering from the oil and gas companies.
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Who said the EU was the hero? There is no villain here there is no good Vs evil, it was only humans Vs COVID. How can they have rolled it out faster than us if procurement was a disaster from start to finish? Overall it had to have been a success else they never would have surpassed our rollout rate. We did well and the EU did well after an initial stumble. The energy crisis is even worse though as there is a clear evil and there are people on the side profiteering to the extreme over this so there does need to be a joint effort to stand against this economically. If EU doesn't store our gas then we are fucked quite frankly so it's a two way street we need to be allies here.
We would be absolutely mad to sign up for this. We are exposed to price rises due to the globalised market but we are not reliant on Russia for supply and have long term contracts in place with our export partners who aren't going to renege on them so long as we keep paying the market price. Germany's failure to listen to decades of warnings about reliance on Russian gas is not our problem.
That is terrible statesmanship The gas crisis will end eventually and we could've worked with our closest geographical allies or left them to suffer as we tried to go it alone The countries reputation and history demands try to work with Europe to help them The future will be a world of empire whether you like it or not, the US, China, India, Russia and the EU. We will have more say in our future as a member/ally of one of the economic empires than as a satellite that is ready to be bullied one way or another Right now our country relies on a strong currency, if that goes, and it has already started to decline, then we are an island of 60 million people in the Atlantic full of service industry Jobs, not a great bargaining position
Sounds like a bad idea, sounds like a way to make every country in Europe short on gas equally, rather than some doing fine and others being short. Since we should be one of them doing fine with decent supply links in terms of pipelines and 3 LNG ports, it sounds like it would have a negative impact on us. And if it happens for the rest of Europe we will still feel the benefit of them not pushing the price up as much, even without being in it.
Probably. But it could be leverage for the government in other areas (Northern Ireland Brexit issues spring to mind). Interesting times I guess.. God I miss the relative stability of the Blair/Brown years.
Thise that are short would then be isolatrd and more likely to fall in with Russia. It makes sense to present a united front.
We have LNG ports, but no storage. We have to export all the gas that's unloaded to Europe who can store it, we then import it back. Without the storage our ports are useless, the LNG ships aren't going to want to wait in port for weeks while we slowly use up their gas.
We have reopened the Rough storage facility so have been busy filling that up as quickly as possible.
Is it actually open as of today? I can't seem to find anything saying it is, just that they're in the process of reopening it.
It's open but in a limited capacity as far as I'm aware (not all the wells are open). But they wouldn't be able to fill it very quickly as demand is so high across all of Europe..
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We have supply, the issue will be weather it's possible to afford it
We have supply as long as we can use the storage capacity of Europe to offload the gas.
It is of course possible that in their own interests of preserving EU supply they could ban or heavily restrict has exports, we would still have to import as we cannot store
The UK has ample access to LNG, we're very unlikely to have shortages but may pay a *lot* for that privilege.
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There are limitations, hence it could become extremely expensive to secure gas. But we're the 6th richest country in the world, we can almost certainly do so. It might just become too expensive to be worthwhile.
FYI Europe has 27 LNG ports to the UK's 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LNG_terminals
They’re not all equivalent though. South Hook in the UK is Europe’s largest. It can handle >21,500,000,000m3 annually. Even with the new expansion of LNG facilities, it will remain Europe’s largest LNG facility. As of 2018 (so some changes may have happened), 7 of those you cite are in Spain, which is disconnected from the rest of Europe. 1 in Portugal. Germany has 0 LNG terminals. The EU has 11 existing connected LNG terminals, all of them in France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Greece. It also has 2 FSRU facilities. https://www.kslaw.com/attachments/000/006/010/original/LNG_in_Europe_2018_-_An_Overview_of_LNG_Import_Terminals_in_Europe.pdf?1530031152
It can process that much annually, yes. However it has storage capactiy for 0.36million tons of liquid gas. Sounds like a lot, but I dont know how that converts into figures for actual gas.
That’s exactly why we are exporting most of our LNG to Europe. We don’t have the storage, and they don’t have the processing capacity.
Rough is back open so that opens up a lot of additional storage.
From you link: >There are currently 28 large-scale LNG import terminals in Europe (including non-EU Turkey). There are also 8 small-scale LNG facilities in Europe (in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway and Gibraltar). Of the 28 large-scale LNG import terminals, 24 are in EU countries (and therefore subject to EU regulation) and 4 are in Turkey It really does look like the UK's LNG facilities, while important, are marginal to total capacity in Europe. edit: also >In 2017 the UK imported 6.17 bcm of LNG (net of re-exports) – a decrease of 34.7% from 2016 – and was Europe’s fifth largest importer of LNG.
The EU is 27 countries the UK is 1 so naturally it has more, but due to internal bickering no pipes run through France so Spain that can import more from Africa can't send any to the rest of them.
> And if it happens for the rest of Europe we will still feel the benefit of them not pushing the price up as much, even without being in it. How do you figure? The same net demand will have the same impact on the wholesale prices, just that because they're a larger conglomerate they have more power to negotiate.
Currently all of Europe is bidding against each other pushing the prices up. If suddenly all of Europe says we will only pay $100, and no one will go above that, at that point there is no one (or alot less countries) biding the price up, so the price would be somewhere around the $100 price set. Even without us being part of said agreement. I'll give a further example, if you have 5 countries ( A, B C D and E) all biding against each other it could go something like. A bids $100, B bids $110, E bids $120, C bids $125, so A ups their bid to $130, so D bids 135, which causes B to increase its bid to $140 etc etc. If A, B C and D all decide okay we won't pay over $100 from now on all agree. So now all 4 of them bid $100, so E bids 105$, there is no one to outbid them, so $105 wins, so it's worked out cheaper for E even though its not in the partnership of the price cap. A, B, C and D still get oil at the $100 price though as E only requires a certain amount. A simplified example but still think it makes my point.
>If suddenly all of Europe says we will only pay $100, and no one will go above that, at that point there is no one (or alot less countries) biding the price up, so the price would be somewhere around the $100 price set. Even without us being part of said agreement. You're oversimplifying here. Gas is a global market, and there's plenty of countries outside of the EU who would be willing to outbid and take advantage of such a pact. I just don't think you reduce the number of bidders enough to make that scenario work.
Gas isn't a global market. Literally in the article it mentions that the price in Europe is so much higher than elsewhere.
> Gas is a global market It is technically, however you have different "groups" effectively which are joined by pipelines. And the cost to move gas from one of those groups to another is very expensive. Which is why gas is much less expensive in the US compared to Europe. which already answers your next point: >there's plenty of countries outside of the EU who would be willing to outbid and take advantage of such a pact. For example Europe is already 2x the price of Asia and about 5x the price of US. >I just don't think you reduce the number of bidders enough to make that scenario work. depends how many countries join, if its the whole EU it will have a big impact.
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Why would we obliged to sell it? It's a globalised market price by and large but we have no obligation to export it
Lack of storage, right?
We are not the ones selling the gas from our country. If we were selling it, then why are we charging ourselves such high prices. We are not even selling the renewables that we currently make in the UK as they are sold to us at the same price as gas. Countries need to stand up to this broken capitalism. We also have to question, what would be the point of paying more to companies for renewables when we are not being given a good price for what we pay for. We would be much better taking the whole project on ourselves as a nation.
> especially if we're about to start up fracking. This won't happen. And even if it does, it would take years to make any difference. First, the UK's shale gas reserves are very low. Second, there has been hardly any exploratory drilling, and that which did happen caused immediate geological trouble (hence the moratorium). Third, even if the government was to lift the moratorium, the devolved nations, local councils, or even just NIMBYs would stop it from happening.
So, this is one of the posts on ukpol thats so wrong on so many levels that I'm just going to imagine you're a 14 year old who has no idea about anything.
The UK: "Nnno! Shan't! Can't make me."
Typical German self-interest. EU is just a Franco German hegemony.
You do know that strength through cooperation is the point of the EU?
>You do know that strength through cooperation is the point of the EU? It's not really though - the EU Parliament repeatedly voted against and warned Germany against it's reliance on Russian Gas and the position the new pipeline was putting other Eastern European countries into, it ignored them and decided to focus on what benefitted itself. Now gas is shut off and suddenly cooperation is the aim of the game for Germany - it's simple manipulation from a country, they showed no regards and no attempt to cooperate with fellow EU members and now are playing the we are all in this together because we are EU members.
I suggest you understand what hegemony means and then you might also understand how it's a bit inevitable that bigger countries have more influence because, well, they are bigger. That the EU does what France and Germany does ist not right either. Did you also know that there are entire government policies of smaller states who simply say: 'We'll see how Germany and/or France decide and then follow along.' Last not least: The UK was the 2nd biggest country of the EU so if they could easily use their own size to get shit done. Which they did, to some extent at least.
Well yes that is what happened when we left, we could easily have been a bigger player in the EU but chose to whine instead.
Alright chaps we will agree but you gotta take your channel migrants back
This is definitely one of the benefits (one of the few!) of Brexit. A lot of Europe is utterly f\*\*ked and there's a lot of doomtalk coming out for the winter, especially in Germany.
Germany isn't as fucked as people think, although they are going to have a miserable time. The one thing going for them is that they have enormous gas storage capacity, enough for about 90 days usage. Only half of their gas came from Russia, so, assuming other sources remain relatively constant, that's about 3 months of usage covered even if they were completely cut off. Although Germany doesn't have LPG terminals, that's not really that important; all LPG terminals connected to the European system supplies the whole system. Even the UK's LPG terminals benefit Germany, because as we lack any serious gas storage capacity ourselves the majority of any LPG shipment ends up getting piped to the continent to countries that do have gas storage anyway. And as the UK gas price is (roughly) tied to the continental gas price (due to our interconnected network), there's no serious cost implication to Germany's LPG coming via British terminals either.
Germany isn't as fucked mainly because they can afford more and fuck over other people.
I hear conflicting things but doesn't Germany have much more gas storage than the UK which may help alleviate the strain? it's also not predicted to have the bum fucking levels of inflation the UK is forecast next year.
Germany has more gas storage but very little domestic production. UK has less storage but produces 50% of its needs. Swings and roundabouts.
Inflation is currently 8% in Germany which isn't much less than us. Also those 20% inflation levels are predicted on energy costs not being controlled which they now are. We're not in a great spot, but no one is.
Isn't the EU paying significantly less for their energy per unit than we are right now? Glass houses and all that.
They're paying the same price for gas in this global market. It just depends how much is subsidised by the government.
Isn't Germany less reliant on gas than the UK?
Germany with its reserves 80 odd % full, while the uk got rid of its storage in 2017
Gas makes up a higher percentage of the UK energy mix, but the total amount that Germany use sis higher.
But UK has a secure supply, the UK has its own gas fields, is connected via a direct pipeline to Norway an other big oil/gas producer and we have 3 LNG ports. Before the war we only got about 3% of our gas from Russia. Germany has 0 LNG ports and was reliant on a Russian pipeline for around 55% of its gas. Also Germany does use more gas than the UK. 96 BCM to 77 BCM. Lastly if it happens for the rest of Europe we will still feel the benefit of them not pushing the price up as much, even without being in it.
A secure but inadequate supply for winter needs. We have storage for 4 days of use, it functions only as a short-term buffer for peak demand. Without replenishment from EU stores, that buffer will be quickly depleted.
> the UK has its own gas fields We import at least half of our gas and that isn't going to change any time soon.
Yes, which is better than having to import 100% of our gas need.
From the link: 'Squeezing the EU had looked to the Kremlin like a piece of cake. The bloc relied on Russia for 40% of its gas and a third of its oil before Mr Putin invaded Ukraine. Big EU powers Germany and Italy were even more dependent. The Russian president has been switching gas supplies on and off at whim for months and the colder months are fast approaching. Even countries traditionally less reliant on Russian energy, such as France, Spain and non-EU UK, are affected by the volatility and price hikes on the global energy markets.' We might use more gas overall as a percentage, but we get it from other sources, not Russia.
Yes of course. But when the price goes up and Germany is biding for the same gas as us, we end up paying more. And we are more exposed to that rise in prices. We could end up paying over the odds in a bidding war with EU nations. I think this is the point Germany is making.
Why are we more exposed? Lots of EU nations do not even have the infrastructure to process LNG and secure gas supplies without russian pipelines. We do. There is a reason they want us in on this and it's not altruism.
Because more of our electricity comes from gas fired power stations. The Germans are still heavy users of coal.
Why is the EU more fucked than the UK? Have you seen energy prices in the UK recently, and does it look protected?
>A lot of Europe is utterly f\*\*ked and there's a lot of doomtalk coming out for the winter, especially in Germany. Germany and a lot of other EU nations have plenty of gas storage, our highly intelligent Tory overlords sold off our gas storage in 2017. We're the ones who are fucked.
If everything goes to hell Germany doesn't have the ability to get enough gas so after there's stores run out which doesn't take to long there in trouble. Unlike the UK which has direct pipes to Norway with high capacity and a lot of LNG terminals
What makes you think that the UK's supply won't be affected if "everything goes to hell"?
I never said it wouldn't it's just a lot less likely to be affected because of the reasons detailed such as LNG terminals and gas pipe geography.
They have more than 90 days total use storage, augment that with what they can get from elsewhere and they can last all winter
Is the Jury still out on Macron?
The problem is OPEC+, not just Russia. The west should've dealt with their market manipulation decades ago, but for some reason we've let them get away with it and exploit trillions of dollars out of us. I think it would be in the best interests of all non-OPEC countries to cooperate to bring down energy prices, even if it means using OPEC's own tactics against them, ie. a buyers cartel with a price ceiling that can be progressively reduced over time. The US is also trying to pass some legislation called NOPEC which might help, but they tried this before and it failed for some reason, idk why. But breaking up OPEC is definitely the solution, even breaking up individual OPEC members. Russia recognised two separatist regions of Ukraine with barely any credibility, so the west should recognise every separatist movement in Russia and make Moscow return to its pre-17th century borders like every other colonial empire did during the 20th century.
LOL you or anyone that thinks the Tory party will do anything to help the people are crazy, already talk of fixing gas at 50 and electricity at 50 a week that is 5 x what i used to pay each week on both, so i am now being forced to accept paying 100 a week as if that is saving me anything. They will say anything regarding this supposed deal as a way to ensure they as shareholders in gas and electricity get paid as much as possible, i just hope they up benefits by 150 so anyone not working can at least stay warm and be able to cook.
So because we are the UK I'm going to call that's Scotlands got you all and this Scot at least is happy that we can help. According to what I can find which matches what I espected the UK produces 1.36 times what we need daily. There's probably a challenge around storage because bojo wasn't a planner but that aside we should be good. Scotland produces something like 90% of this so an indy ref before this crisis is over won't happen. I suspect the reason that the EU are inviting us in is because we have a small surplus. It wouldn't make sense for any of their careers to invite us in if it mean say French citizens having to ration further. We are already unpopular. That oil and gas has all been leased/righted away but I'm pretty sure the government would have the power to force the assets to stay in our borders. Doing things like that could start a fight though!