Thursday, January 8, 2009

Gaz-PROBLEM?!?!

So if you have a life/don't spend hours listening to npr, you probably haven't heard about "Le Fiasco de Gazprom." If, however, you watch Deutsche Welle, download the Planet Money podcast, and read Frankfurter All., well, you know that Russia has Europe in a VEEERRRRYYYY tight spot when it comes to natural gas.

Let me explain really quick: aside from Norway (props, y'all!), one-fourth of Europe gets its natural gas from Russia, and of course, it's RUSSIA, so it can't just "be cool" and spread it out through several companies working in the private sphere. Gazprom is THE Russian natural gas company, employing pretty much every Russian prime minister you can name, and any European ex-prime minister who isn't busy running around speaking with a French accent about "culture." They are a B-I-G deal, and they have a killer logo:


Looks like a Bond villain...feels like one too

Innit all dark/powerful? Would be kind of attractive were it not for the fact that whenever a country ticks Russia off, like say Ukraine, Russia simply shuts down deliveries of gas to it.
That's fine, but how does Russia getting hacked off at Ukraine effect you?
Well, most of the pipelines delivering gas to Europe run through there, so Russia effectively cut us off, and we're living on reserves.

HOW THIS EFFECTS KATE
(because I know y'all care!)
When I first heard this bit of news, I was flipping out. Literally every night when I went to bed I could FEEL my room getting ever colder. Add to this that the radiator in the teacher's lounge broke (of course), so I decided to link this up with the Gazprom situation, and let me tell you, there's still 3 inches of snow on the ground, and it's FREEZING, so I was WORRIED!
BUT, I was chatting with one of the teachers on staff, and she says (and my nerd-research backs this up) that Berlin is on an oddly-placed natural gas deposit and also has mega reserves when Germany's reserves are on average about a week. Long story short:
I don't have to think about world events YET AGAIN!
Warm and pleasant dreams, y'all!

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