The US has moved a step closer to becoming a global gas exporting power with the approval of a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal on the west coast that will send a warning signal to the Kremlin. The Department of Energy authorized a permit on Monday for the Jordan Cove LNG project in Oregon to export 800m cubic feet per day (cfpd) of gas for the next 20 years to countries that don't have a free-trade agreement with the US.
The approval comes amid concern that Russia will use its vast gas and oil resources as political leverage in its dispute with the West over the future of Ukraine and Crimea. The US recently released 5m barrels of oil for sale from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a move that was interpreted at the time by some analysts as a warning to Moscow not to use energy as a weapon.
If Putin gets even more annoyed, he will do a massive deal with China (he's going there in May) to flog Russia's oil using a commodity-backed reserve currency that bypasses the petrodollar.
That might well further crash both the US economy and ours.
Is this deliberate neocon policy?
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
US lawmakers are pushing the Department of Energy to speed up approvals of gas export projects to add to international pressure already building on Vladimir Putin after the White House and the European Union hit Russia with sanctions.
“Given the situation in Ukraine, this licence sends a positive signal to our allies and to energy markets that the United States is ready to join the growing global gas trade,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, who sits on the influential US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in a statement following the gas export approval. LNG, shipped by boat, could be cheaper than Russian gas transported by pipeline over thousands of miles. Always useful to have an alternative source of supply to keep the prices on a level. Russia has played the shut off game before and is relying on it now ( it may well succeed in the short term - I would place bets on Russia retaining the Crimea ) Remember OPEC in the 70s ? That promoted alternative supplies of oil....I think people are missing the main point here... Russia can't be dealt with in the same way Irak and Lybia were... and if they start selling oil and gas in ANY currency the dollar will have no support.. the days of the petro-dollar are now numbered and the logic of tripling the money supply will soon arrive, i.e. the dollar will drop like a Ukrainian soldier gun... watch inflation shooting up in the US and GDP dropping also, which will bring about a reduction in the budget and overall power of the US to the level of a major power but no longer super-power... those days are gone, so let's all thank the EUSSR for bringing something good to the table for the first time in my rusty memory...
No comments:
Post a Comment