KW: This is how U.S. global domination works. From Agora Financial newsletter
A lot of people scratched their heads this morning when the president said Germany is “totally controlled by Russia.” Not us. Not after what we’ve chronicled for the last year.
“We’re supposed to be guarding against Russia,” he said at the NATO summit in Brussels, “and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia… They will be getting 60–70% of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline.”
Nearly a year ago, Donald Trump signed into law a bill that, among other things, imposed sanctions on companies involved in financing Nord Stream 2 — an offshore natural gas pipeline pumping Russian gas to Germany.
His 60–70% figure might be inflated, but Germany does need gas to stay warm in the winter — and to wean its power grid off the nuclear plants it plans to shut down by 2022. Nord Stream 2, covering a slightly different route than the existing Nord Stream pipeline from Russia, would go a long way toward meeting Germany’s future gas needs.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out that Nord Stream 2 is backed by private investors in Germany and elsewhere in Europe — not by the German government. But from Trump’s vantage point, that doesn’t matter. Because back in Washington, there’s a hidden agenda at work…
It comes down to this question: If Germany can’t get its growing gas needs filled by Russia, who else can step up?
As we said when the president signed the sanctions legislation last August, the only other viable option is LNG — liquefied natural gas shipped on tankers from the United States.
Why don’t the Germans do it? Cost. The process of supercooling gas into a liquid state at a U.S. port… hauling it across the Atlantic… then returning it to gas form at a European port… adds at least 20% to the cost compared with Russian gas transported via pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
The big gun in liquefied natural gas exports is Cheniere Energy Inc. — with the appropriate ticker symbol LNG.
Follow the money with us for a moment. Starting in 2013, as the shale energy boom made it evident that America could become a natural gas exporter, Cheniere stepped up its lobbying efforts in Washington — big-time. LNG spent $4 million in 2016 alone. Then… with passage of the new Russia sanctions in August 2017… Cheniere’s lobbying budget fell off a cliff…
LNG is an outrageous example of crony capitalism in action. It’s also probably a strong buy at present levels. This is what you get when you have lobbyists controlling thinking in the U.S. and a (for the non thinking and desperate middle America armed to the teeth with guns for ‘self defence’) supporting a rogue who is now President of the United States and who has an ego so large he doesn’t care a bit about anyone else in the world doing legitimate business deals with people who respect the essence of the deal. Germany is under pressure to yeild or can tough it out.