> <i>the flaring at Gazprom’s Portovaya plant is an “environmental disaster," with about 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide being emitted every day</i><p>This is hyperbole. Venting the gas would be an environmental disaster. Flaring just burns it somewhere different.
Short term Europe is fucked.
Long term Russia is fucked.<p>Ten years from now Europe will be importing gas from Quatar and Gabon. And even if hypothetically Russia conquers half of Ukraine it won't offset the loss of gas contracts.
There's a reason why OPEC only tried that oil embargo stunt once- alternatives are found.
I find it strange that they don't set a negative price for natural gas, thus giving domestic producers an incentive to pause production.<p>Some natural gas is produced as a byproduct of pumping oil, but is that enough to glut their market on its own?
It's done out of necessity, not to spite anyone or to hurt the whole world.<p>The gas has to go somewhere, but if the regular receiver (EU) doesn't want it or denies the seller the ability to charge for it (sanctions) then you can't just keep compressing and piping it somewhere else forever.
<p><pre><code> >much of this gas would have been used to feed into the pipeline grid and sold on to Europe. Because Russia has sharply cut supply to Europe...
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More of this Orwellian spin that Russia 'cut the supply'.<p>The EU sanctioned Russia and cut off their access to the global banking system and to their foreign currency holdings. They also announced that they'd be stopping buying any Russian gas at all by 2023. So Russia demanded Europe pay for their gas in Roubles. Because why wouldn't they in those circumstances? Most of Europe refused to pay in Roubles so Russia [and again, why wouldn't they?] said <i>"If you don't pay, you can't have the gas"</i><p>The fact that this series of events is being constantly spun across multiple western media sources now as an arbitrary 'Russia turned off the taps' --in attempt to divert anyone from asking whether the west [and the EU in particular] has spectacularly shot itself in the foot here-- is disgraceful.<p>And we have the gall to criticise countries like China for the dishonesty of their press!