So, at what point does Putin think it’s worth a spin of the wheel?
That was yesterday.
This was the day before.
My personal view is that this just a chess moves in the game of oil resources. America does not want a war in Ukraine. Biden and his group have a lot of interest in Ukraine energy production. Hillary mess it up and the reserves went to Russia. Biden put restrictions on Russia to force Russia to share some of the wealth with his group and Russia did not respond. Russia put troops on the border. A war is the last thing Biden wants. You can’t drill in a war zone and Russia is in no hurry to drill.
Saudi Arabia holds 266,578,000,000 barrels of proven oil. The Ukraine’s land we are talking about has unproven oil reserves that geologist think could be larger. Don’t forget Obama sent boots, not guns to help the Ukraine. The oil right went from the Russian farmers living in the Ukraine to the Ukraine government to trusts in the EU. And a lot of US tax dollars are going to Ukraine. Ukraine does not have enough military hardware but was able to spend a billion dollars ordering an offshore drilling rig.
I’m going to double down on the Red too.
I can’t see what’s in it for Putin. Invading. He won’t suffer much for it, as long as he doesn’t start a cyberwar, sanctions are meaningless, China will ignore them, including banking. W. Europe can’t survive without Russian gas. But what does he stand to gain? And how does he get out? Taking the economic basket cases of Luhansk and Donetsk with him?
Surely it suits him to maintain the status quo. Having the latter two protectorates, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, ensures that Ukraine, like Georgia, cannot join NATO. Having fingers in pies is far more cost effective.
Ukraine wants to join NATO which means a presence on Russia’s doorstep. Putin can’t let that happen – and he has the will and the means. That is probably all there is to it.
It can’t happen anyway, there’s a territorial dispute. There’s no need to invade, for that reason.
What makes you think it is about oil?
I ask the question based on the data that available (recoverable) oil reserves may run out in some 40+ years, at current consumption which is:
Data from BP Statistical Review, Oil & Gas Journal, World Oil, BP Statistical Review, CEDIGAZ, and Oil & Gas Journal.
1,449,841,867,685 Oil left (barrels)
15,120 Days to the end of oil (~41 years)
Countdown to the end of Oil:
Assumption: If consumed at current rates
How much oil has ever been used?
![[IMG]](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/centerforinquiry/original/2X/5/5f940295276244a62e41efa38a01f4ff36990a20.jpeg)
Looking at the total consumption by decade, consumption has increased from almost 200 billion barrels in the '70s to nearly 350 billion barrels over the last decade. All told, from 1969 to 2018, a fifty-year span, the world has consumed 1.306 trillion barrels of oil. Aug 20, 2019
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the world consumed 96.92 million barrels per day in 2016, with the top 10 consumers accounting for 60 percent of the total consumption. That’s nearly 100 million barrels per day.
At today’s average oil price of 60perbarrelforBrentcrude,that′s60perbarrelforBrentcrude,that′s5.8 billion consumed. Every. Day.
How Much Crude Oil Has The World Really Consumed? | OilPrice.com
Oil is the world’s most used energy source. Ukraine’s oil is unproven reserves. Not on your chart. They could extend the use of oil by a decade. Russia now has control of most of the unproven reserves. Who are the people who owned the drilling rights before Russia took over the land? Personally, I think the swamp is the place to look.
Ukraine voted to leave the Russian federation in 1991. In 2014 part of Ukraine, the Crimean status referendum was the Russian farmers voting to leave Ukraine and go back to Russia. That was caused by Ukraine nationalizing their mineral rights and making all schools, contracts, and media to use the Ukraine language that was officially the Ukrainian language from 1989 but not enforced in the Crimean until the mineral rights became an issue. Both Russian and Ukrainian are Indo-European Slavic. Where Russian is spoken by most of Ukraine’s neighbors and 30% of all Ukrainian’s. Mostly all Russian spoken in Ukraine is in the Crimean area. The Ukrainian government required all business to do business in Ukrainian or be penalized.
Added to this is the fact that Ukraine is very religious. Higher percentage of Christians than the United States. A split has been taking place with the Orthodox Ukrainians and the Orthodox Russian churches which is part of the geopolitical split.
Apparently, it is you who is not reading charts. Recoverable oil reserves will end in about 40 years, period .
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the world consumed 96.92 million barrels per day in 2016, with the top 10 consumers accounting for 60 percent of the total consumption. That’s nearly 100 million barrels per day.
100 million barrels p/day!!!
A find of 400 million barrels of oil will last 4 days!!!
As well as restoring Crimea after Khrushchev’s empty 1954 gesture, Russia has two ‘protectorates’ in Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk, meaning that Ukraine can never apply for NATO membership unless it accepts all three territorial losses, under international law.
Putin was a communist and an agent of KGB.
Putin want to build again the great Russia, with its clients states. It means that the ex stellites of Russia must be kept under control. For Putin, it is something evident and the wills of the people have no weight.
Ukraine has been a part of Russia since the 18th century .
There is another matter.
Putin hates the West, what he sees as its degenerate values, its decadence, and wants preserve Russia from its contagion.
Last and not least, if Ukraine succeeds setting up a democratic and honest government, functioning along the liberal norms, it gives to every Eastern country a very bad exemple.
All is far from perfect in Ukraine from this point of view, and Putin would be happy about that.
Recoverable oil is oil of a useable grade that is close to a pipeline. If the price is high enough then trucking is a possibility. It is not unusual to drill a well and have layers of oil-bearing shale. But the well is still unproductive. Unproven reserves become recoverable oil reserves when wildcatted holes are logged. With Ukraine ordering a billion-dollar platform. They will most likely hire a drilling ship to wildcat the geological domes in the Black Sea where they still own the drilling rights. If they don’t hire a drilling ship and use the platform, then I would bet the US taxpayers are footing the bill. The Russian Ukraine region have enticed geologist for decades. It has the type of physical geology that is textbook perfect for oil and the layers of shale that trap the oil. Along with earth movement that have formed domes for the oil to collect in.
That’s the problem. The price cannot be high enough and not be too high to make drilling profitable. Nobody can afford to pay 10.00 p/gal. There are cheaper alternatives that are already competing with oil. Oil is on its way out for MANY reasons, price and availability being only one consideration. There is that pesky climate warming that won’t go away with any use of non-renewable resources, like oil.
That would be sure proof of God if Ukrainians became honest.
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That is another problem for Ukraine. One refinery in Odesa processing 250,000 barrels a day. Three-fourths of that oil is cheap oil pipelined in from Russia. Ukraine does not have the funds to buy shipped in oil unless it is from Venezuela. USA does not want that to happen. If Russia cuts off Ukraine’s oil. They also shut down oil for Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Germany.
And they go broke. Their economy is third rate as it is.
What if …
Putin is stirring the pot to make Biden look bad in the hopes of another trump, or trump-wannabe run for president.
…?
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Aye, (Son of) Trump would leave NATO, or leave Europe out to dry. But there are far worse Republicans who still believe they can win a partial nuclear war with Russia. As long as only Ukraine and Belarus get nuked, that’s OK…
If Russia can synthesize a pro-Russian coup that requests Russian military assistance, they will. But it’s not as ‘simple’ as Afghanistan, where they simply invaded to oppose an anti-Russian coup. They haven’t tried that even in Georgia.
PS It’s more like Afghanistan than I realised, going back to 2014.
Any excuse and he’s in, it looks like.
What’s the casus belli? A false flag ‘Ukrainian’ attack on Belarus?
The US president, Joe Biden, last week said that Putin himself may not know what he plans to do . But the results are either reckless brinkmanship or preparations for a large-scale military operation.
“It gradually dawned on Putin that if he stays on the track of stable and predictable, as Biden indicated, he’s the designated loser,” said Pavel Baev, research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and a Brookings Institution nonresident fellow. “Something needed to be done. He went for this escalation quite sharply .”
I’m under a half megatonner. Not quite enough to be in the fireball. But hopefully near enough.
1986 Chernobyl disaster.
1991 Ukraine left Russia.
1991 to 2003 $13B paid for cleanup.
2011 — 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the United States is still paying hundreds of millions of dollars to help clean up the site.
2019 $68B has been spent on Chernobyl.
Ukraine – one of the swamp’s piggy banks. Example, family members of people like Kerry and Biden end up with family members involved in Ukraine business.
Today, we have groups of senators flying to Ukraine to warn Ukraine of a Russian invasion. Not the military or ambassador. But congressmen.
1991 Autonomous Republic of Crimea was formed. And was a formal autonomous republic within the USSR. The Republic also left Russia that year and joined Ukraine.
1993 Crimean parliament established the post of President of Crimea.
1994 post of president was abolished.
1997 Crimea was affirmed as Ukrainian territory.
2010 Ukraine leased ports to Russia and allowed 25,000 Russian troops to stay in Crimean. The Crimean vote was only 5% pro-Russian.
2014 The pro-Russian vote was 97%.
This is where I would look for “What’s the casus belli?” The issues that were the turning point of the Crimean people against Ukraine.
That was after they took it back, after Khrushchev’s empty gesture 60 years before.
None of that is any justification for Russia invading Ukraine. There is none so they’ll have to invent one. A false flag operation on the Belarus and/or Transnistria border/s will do.