Excerpted from: THE UKRAINE WAR: BEGINNINGS – 34 Days That Shook The World
Complete article compilation here: https://derkoolschrank.com/the-ukraine-war-beginnings-34-days-that-shook-the-world/
WHAT’S UNDER THE TABLE
By Durt Fibo, March 28, 2022
Yesterday I wrote in part about the increasing European use of Russian fuel. And the world’s increasing independence from Russia, or how to go about it. Today I will address the stakes in tomorrow’s scheduled peace parley, which will begin around noon in Istanbul. So I will skip the day’s battle reports, atrocity listing, or even just trying to count pieces of buildings. I will for now pass over rumors of Russia’s “Korea-style demarcation” approach to ending their war, and Ukraine’s already expressed willingness to side-step NATO, leave Luhansk and Donetsk as they wish, and probably allow Russia their land corridor to the sea –all contingent on peace and honest security guarantees– and go directly to the talks; what is truly on the table, and under it.
At this historical juncture, we can see too well how power can be provided by guns, legal sophistries, electricity, and fossil fuels.
Ukraine, having spent more of its budgets and development on infrastructure than its military, is of necessity leading Europe towards amicable and dependable solutions. Already, by March 16, the European Union and Ukraine integrated their electrical energy systems, with Ukraine becoming a full member of what the Heinrich Böll Foundation once dubbed ‘the European Energy Union’. On that day Ukrenergo National Power Company plugged into the European grid to complete a single system, which, President Zelenskiy explained means “Now our electricity flows to the EU and vice versa,” and “are now working synchronously.” He added that the Ukrainian electrical system had immediately disconnected itself from Russia the first day of the war, and swore that it “will never return.” However, while still sizzling on the subject of electricity, readers should note that the largest private utility company in Ukraine, DTEK, still operates a few power plants in the Luhansk and Donetsk environs.
This full partnership gave further hope and inspiration to everyone resentful of Russia’s present domination in the forms of power listed above, starting from the assessment that no nation in Europe can offer its people guarantees against future (or even daily) price spikes with the current level of dependency on gas, oil and coal, regardless of where it comes from, and thinking forwards from there; setting aside for the moment the European Council’s March 25th meeting of pusillanimous minds, other thinkers began to consider the EU/Ukraine melding in terms the European Commission’s program already laid out on July 14 (Bastille Day) just last year. In the published words of the Commission itself:
“The European Green Deal presented by the Commission on 11 December 2019, sets the goal of making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The European Climate Law, which enters into force this month, enshrines in binding legislation the EU’s commitment to climate neutrality and the intermediate target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.” To wit: “Energy production and use accounts for 75% of EU emissions, so accelerating the transition to a greener energy system is crucial. […] The Renewable Energy Directive will set an increased target to produce 40% of our energy from renewable sources by 2030. All Member States will contribute to this goal.” And while looking ahead, the program also happened to look up and below, specifying that: “Aviation and maritime fuels cause significant pollution and also require dedicated action to complement emissions trading. The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation requires that aircraft and ships have access to clean electricity supply in major ports and airports. The ReFuel IEU Aviation Initiative will oblige fuel suppliers to blend increasing levels of sustainable aviation fuels in jet fuel taken on-board at EU airports, including synthetic low carbon fuels, known as e-fuels. Similarly, the Fuel IEU Maritime Initiative will stimulate the uptake of sustainable maritime fuels and zero-emission technologies by setting a maximum limit on the greenhouse gas content of energy used by ships calling at European ports.”
But the battleground is still in every sense in Ukraine. Back in 2019, the European Commission in its own interest mediated a deal which committed Gazprom to send 40 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas to Europe through the Ukrainian “Brotherhood” (Druzhba) pipeline until 2024, and was in negotiations to extend that through to 2039. If that extension were signed, Ukraine was willing to reduce its transit fees by 50%. At the beginning of February this year, transit fees charged by pipeline nations transporting Russian gas were: Belarus: $1,75 per 1,000 cubic meters per 60 miles; Poland: $1,05; Ukraine: $2.66; and Western Europe starting rates are $3.50. The individual nations’ earnings from that were: Ukraine: $1.2 billion; Poland: “a fraction of that”; and Belarus: zero (stats per Oxford Institute for Energy Studies). Ukraine itself ceased purchasing gas directly from Russia in 2015, instead buying back some of what transited through the country in what’s called “reverse flow,” from Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. Including this looping, by February 24, 2022, Ukraine actually consumed 27.3 billion cubic meters of gas –the majority of it (about 19.8 bcm) being self-produced. Then, when Russia attacked, the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy prohibited the export of all non-flow-through liquid natural gas in order to preserve what it had for its own use. This was wise, because nearly 40 LNG distribution stations have been damaged, destroyed and shut in the course of the war, and nobody who is not an artillery shell can get close enough to repair them. The fees for fuels transiting from Russia through Ukraine are paid by the end-recipients; Russia does not pay a cent to Ukraine. Before war broke out, the thinking was that Ukraine could import via the Trans-Balkan pipeline (from Azerbaijan). Of that pipeline, the Balkan Hub might’ve included LNG via Turkmenistan, Thrace and what was to be an endless field beneath the Black Sea.
In terms of hypothetical self-sufficiency, the chief Ukrainian oil and gas regions are: Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, Kharkiv, and Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk (these latter two far from any fronts, but targeted by Russian bombs and shells recently). As of this morning, Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported that “Russia continues to attack villages of Topolske, Kamyanka, and Sukha Kamyanka near the city of Izyum, southeast of Kharkiv.”
Ukraine inherited a substantial gas and oil delivery network from the Soviet years. Until recently, a third of Europe’s gas purchases flowed through Ukraine, although that is today down to about 20%, yet the Ukrainian system remains attached to Europe’s energy consuming corpus. The three pipelines running through Ukraine to Europe are the Yamal, the Soyuz. and the Brotherhood, which all eventually lead into the Baumgarten Gas Hub in Austria. By March 11, Russia had captured two key pipeline compressor stations controlling the flow of exports passing through Ukraine, both in what became the eastern front. One in Novopskov near Dnipro, about 60 miles south of Poltava and a second in Kupyansk, slightly shy of 150 miles due west of Poltava, but only 20 miles in from the Russian border. The Soyuz carries almost a third of all Russian gas transiting Ukraine. On the Russian side of the border area are the compressor stations at Sudzha –25 miles east of Sumy– and Sokhranovka –roughly 60 miles north of Luhansk.
In the fall of 2013, Ukraine, under President Viktor Yanukovich, signed a deal with Royal Dutch Shell to explore and develop the Yuzovska field, which was estimated to contain reserves of some 4 trillion cubic meters of shale gas. The assessments from both RDS and the Ukraine energy agencies involved anticipated that not only would Ukraine become fuel-self-sufficient, but that the country would be in a position to export enough to Europe to drastically reduce reliance on Russian exports. The Yuzovaska deposit resembles an upside-down tuning fork, starting around Konotop and splitting right where one could draw a line from Kyiv to Sumy. The northern tine runs from Lebedyn/Trostyanets down to Bilokurakyne (basically following within 20 to 25 miles of the Russian border above it); the southern forks through Poltava (55 miles southwest of the Russian border) and fades out near Izyum (70 miles southwest of Russia). The Donetsk find is coal. This explains the implacable Russian attempts to subdue the northeast border from Konotp to Kharkiv (Sudzha), and the far northeastern tiny earlobe above Luhansk (Sokhranovka).
What’s more, since 2011 Ukraine aimed to increase its Black Sea natural gas extraction from 1 bcm to 3 bcm in 2015. By 2012 Black Sea production reached 1.2 bcm. That was the year Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and other major oil companies explored the Black Sea and discovered an estimated 2.3 trillion cubic meters of gas were found to be under it –the Ukrainian-owned section of it. In August 2012, Ukraine signed a contract with an Exxon group to extract the oil and gas, the development phase of which would cost Ukraine $12 billion.
Naturally, Vladimir Putin heard of the exploratory results, tried to replay his standard protection racket for a cut, was rejected, and then annexed Crimea in 2014. Adept at using the United Nations as its Imperial knout, Russia knew that from then on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Part V, from Article 55 all the way through to Article 75 gave it complete ownership of nearly four fifths of the Black and Azov Seas and all they contained. Or, as the UN has it, a 230 mile radius around the shore of whatever Russia calls Russia entitling it to: “sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the production of energy from the water, currents and winds” (Part V, Article 56,1;a).
All deals Ukraine made have been frozen since 2014, and now, since February, 2022, Russian forces have been piling up in a southern and southeastern front, which also happens to be the coastline of the Black and Azov Seas. Ergo their attacks and digging in from Mariupol, to Melitopol, to Kherson, and up to Mykolaiv, with the threat to Odessa pulsating throughout the war.
As a final point, Turkey, which will be hosting tomorrow’s talks, had, near the end of last year, arranged with Ukraine’s Naftogaz to begin extracting those same gas reserves.