Russia has scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume flows via a major gas supply route to Germany, deepening Europe’s difficulties in securing winter fuel, after saying it had found faults in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline during maintenance. – Yahoo
It seems an unlikely coincidence that Russia suddenly became unable to supply gas at almost the same time that Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, started talking about putting price caps on natural gas. If it is what it appears to be, Russia is saying “If we can’t get market price for our gas, we will have no gas for sale.” Despite this position having real and possible political effects, it is not a political argument, but an economic one.
For everyone involved, we have to hope something can be worked out — preferably for transmission through both Nordstream 1 & 2 — before the snow flies. It seems that the attempts to weaken Putin by sanctioning Russia have backfired. Unless Russia’s “special military operation” is losing ground — not the impression I have — Putin now holds by far the stronger hand.
A final point that explains part of the reason for the strength of Putin’s position is that for a decade he has been building Russia’s national reserves by increasing gold holdings and by emphasizing development of natural resources, instead of trying to build up a stock of digital fiat currency, as most of his competitors have done.
LSJohn
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