US puts more sanctions on Russia - Do you agree with this?

Rhys Essien wrote: »

Before the 'vote' a few weeks ago,around 60% of Crimeans were Russian speaking/Russian extraction.When the result of the 'vote' was announced 93% of Crimeans wanted to join with Russia.

Im no mathematician but what does that tell you.:D

There were alot of ahem not troops on the ground.

fran17 wrote: »

ah well you see that bird just doesn't fly,you either have a rule book or you don't.who guaranteed this and under what international agreement or law is it valid?

US UK Russia signed the agreement.

These sanctions are just hurting the average people,
just heard on the news that the EU will be subsidising 125mil to EU famers/producers for losses due to sanctions,
but they sold 2bil worth of produce last year so there losing out big time, why cause of all these politics,
when the usa was throwing their weight around the middle east no one sanctioned them
but when russia starts to make a play bam,

there are two things i'd like to see in my life time that will probably never happen,
and thats america to get whats comming to them,
and for religion to be abolished (war on terror ha ha the real terror is religion who cares what invisible force in the sky you pray to doesn't mean you have to kill each other)

war usually follows sanctions. unless one side backs down or a compromise is found between the two and at the moment does anyone see any signs of this happening. I dont. its time for the adults to step in and do something. this entire situation is borderline crazy. there are so many reasons why Europe and Russia cannot be at loggerheads, forget about the US they have their own reasons for getting involved, though it isnt in the interests of Europe to be facing off with Russia. Europe is already suffering over the US driven sanction war. so far the US seems just fine. and its especially silly and dangerous because of our energy dependence on Russia. Ive read lots of comments of how Europe can source its energy somewhere else and the US can swoop in and save the day and all this jazz. this line of thinking in the short to medium term is nothing but nonsense. in the case of the US its just nonsense. pure fantasy. this situation needs to be sorted out with Russia and quickly.
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Recent entreaties by various US politicians to help wean Europe off of Russian gas are simply preposterous. The numbers don't add up, and they never will.

Let's begin with the facts:

16% of natural gas consumed in Europe flows through Ukraine

Mar 14, 2014

Europe, including all EU members plus Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, and the non-EU Balkan states, consumed 18.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas in 2013. Russia supplied 30% (5.7 Tcf) of this volume, with a significant amount flowing through Ukraine. EIA estimates that 16% (3.0 Tcf) of the total natural gas consumed in Europe passed through Ukraine's pipeline network, based on data reported by Gazprom and Eastern Bloc Energy.
(Source)
If the US wants Europe entirely off of Russian natural gas (NG), it will have to immediately replace 5.7 trillion cubic feet per year, or 15 billion cubic feet per day.

The entire set of US shale gas plays, which consist of 8 major plays and a slew of minor ones, cumulatively provide the US with 27 billion cubic feet per day. That is, just over half of the entire current US shale gas play would have to be dedicated to the European cause of eliminating Russian natural gas dependency.

And even with the shale plays, in April 2014 the US remains a net gas importer. In 2013, the most recent full year of data, the US had to import 1.3 trillion cubic feet to satisfy domestic consumption.

More pointedly, 2013 was a pretty cold winter, the kind that comes along every so often, and the US barely made it through that period without running dangerously low on NG as it was.

To make it through the heavy demands of winter natural gas must be stockpiled in advance. As a result, the gas storage report always shows seasonal builds and draw downs of natural gas:

In all my years of watching the energy statistics I've never seen NG storage get this low. Look how far below the average 5 year range it got...all the way down to just 800 billion cubic feet in storage.

And this was with the "shale gas miracle" chugging along merrily in the background.

If the US had magically managed to have the appropriate liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals all built and had wanted to completely supply Europe with US gas to replace Russian gas, it could have only done so for 53 days (800 bcf/15 bcf/day) before the US would have completely run out of its gas in storage.

Of course, this could never be done. If NG ever gets too low in storage, you run the risk of having the pressure drop in all the associated pipelines and delivery systems to such a low level that things have to be shut down. Pilot lights go out, system pressures falter in some areas before others, turbines can't be run, and industrial processes terminate.

If you thought the winter of 2013 was hard, imagine it with the added specter of having to re-light every residential pilot light in a region. There are not enough service people to do that.

And well before a crisis moment like that arrives, a form of utility triage would be implemented; Step 1 of which would be shutting off exports of LNG to Europe and any other ex-US destinations.

What then would Europe do? Freeze and suffer through its own chain of shortage-related failures because the US could not actually supply what was needed?

What would quickly happen is that Europe would return to Russia for at least part of its gas needs. So all that the US could ever do, realistic or not, is supplant some of Russia's role as NG supplier to Europe.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-20/us-gas-will-never-replace-russian-gas-europe