the sooner people realise the war in Ukraine is about oil and gas, and the pipelines the sooner we can accept that Russia is no different than the west in Iraq. (Ukraine has A LOT of oil and gas, the Dinper-Donest basin = 1.3 trillion cubic meters of oil alone.) pic.twitter.com/HM83YJk3Pi
— alex (@SchmalfCo) June 1, 2022
This is simplistic nonsense. The war isn’t about gas or oil. The war isn’t Iraq. Falling back on leftist cliches about all wars being ‘wars for oil’ is purile.
Russia has a vast surplus of gas, they don’t give a damn about Ukraine’s gas, that isn’t what this war is about.
Well, the British, French AND the Americans were indeed wanting the oil in the Middle East after the First World War. Funny old world huh?
How is that relevant?
If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
The war is about religion, nationalism, imperialism and (above all) stupidity.
The 1.3 trillion cubic meters is a cute way to describe oil reserves, particulary when professionals discuss reserves in barrels, but a trillion sure does sound like a lot to the untrained laymen. However, when we move past the propaganda and put these words in investment banker terms, then we can conclude the 1.3T is not very much. Let me help illustrate. Those who trade for a living know that Russia is already the largest supplier of natural gas in the world. They have over 80B barrels in reserves. The United States has 35B barrels in reserves, and their next door neighbor, Canada, has about 170B barrels which is about 50B barrels more than Iraq, so oil is not a problem for North America or Russia. Ukraine only has 350M barrels. To put the 350M barrels in perspective — Thailand, known for Tourism and certainly not their oil — has more barrels than Ukraine. Thailand has about 420M barrels. If Russia was so desperate for oil and wanted to start a war to acquire oil, then it would be so much easier and much more lucrative for them to target Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, especially azerbaijan which has about 7B barrels or 20 times more than Ukraine.
Obviously, the war has nothing to do with oil. It has everything to do with bad foreign policy, bad diplomacy, NATO aggression over the last thirty years, and violating the Minsk agreement. France helped negotiate that deal, which would have worked for both sides, but I suppose the Kiev elite were worried about losing the oil in Donbass after they separated. But Russia and the U.S. don’t need a pathetic 350M barrels. That is laughable. The tiny state of mississipi can produce more than that.
George: Highly informative. More facts. Global wheat exports by nation
https://www.atlasbig.com/en-ca/countries-by-wheat-production
Many factors operate consciously and unconsciously in war as politics by other means. Single causes and simplifications are debatable. What the UK should put first is our own safety – in food supply, raw material supply, military defence and currency stability. Then work out a foreign policy from those considerations.
How many more Ukrainian and Russian lives will be lost in a grinding civil war before an agreement is made to give Russia a land corridor to the Crimea? As for Putin and his circle, Mark Galeotti is possibly the best informed analyst, but in all matters again different viewpoints need consideration. Russia is still a riddle wrappped in an enigma, but faces population decline, like other white countries – a factor we should remember.