Buy a paid subscription, get a free book in a few years
Remember that you can email me at TheSpouter@Substack.com. It goes to my personal email address.
A timeline will be useful.
July, 2009. Biden’s first visit to Ukraine as VP. Ukraine was already a deeply polarized society, with clear lines of division between the predominantly Ukrainian-speaking Western half of the country and the predominantly Russian-speaking East. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian leaders had walked a delicate line to keep good relations both with Western Europe and Russia. For the far right Ukrainian nationalist movement, especially strong in the Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, this was never an acceptable situation.
November, 2011. Nordstream 1 came online as American Frack Gas was sinking the global price of natural gas.
February 2012, Charif Souki secured his first $5.4 billion investment from Blackstone to begin converting his Sabine Pass LNG Import Facility to an Export facility. the construction project to convert it from an import to an export terminal lasted four years until its first shipment of LNG in February 2016, reinforcing the fact that it was in some ways harder than just demolishing the import terminal and starting from scratch.
December, 2012. Having learned to frack itself, Gazprom began construction on the South Stream Pipeline, which would bring gas to Europe through the Black Sea, running through Crimea to Bulgaria.
January, 2013. Charif Souki and his then-staffer Ankit Desai had a series of meetings with Heather Zichal, the deputy energy secretary for the Obama/Biden administration, and future board member of Souki’s company. Desai had previously worked as political director for then-Senator Biden. The Obama White House held 32 meetings with Cheniere, including two attended by the President and one attended by the First Lady. We may never know what was discussed at any of those meetings.
November, 2013. Viktor Yanukovych decided not to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union, which had already been stalled since 2012. He did so to help along separate negotiations taking place with Russia, with whom his country is closely related, as Ukraine is home to many millions of Russian speakers. This would have been a minor story among the European technocratic class, but somehow it instead became the occasion for the opposition to come out in force. How this Euromaidan protest was first manifested may always be shrouded in mystery, but the top-level of this protest movement are clear:
It was dominated by the “25%” who had voted for Poroshenko over Yanukovych: this is a shorthand to say that they were right wing Ukrainian-speakers predominantly from the western part of the country.
That 25% included the far-right OUN-B, a previously-marginal organization that subscribes to Nazi ideas of racial supremacy and believes that Ukrainian identity is an ethnic category that excludes all Russian-speakers (34% of the country, upwards of 8 million people).
It enjoyed the strong support of the Americans, led in this by Vice President Joe Biden.
February 18, 2014. the Euromaidan movement climaxed in an orgy of violence in which the protestors fired on their own members in order to produce the 100 bodies that the Americans said they would need to support a coup. Foreign ministers of Germany, Poland, and France flew to Kiev to negotiate a deal with Yanukovych, which resulted in a truce agreement. Victoria Nuland famously said “Fuck the E.U.” and proceeded to support “regime change operations” that ended up overthrowing Yanukovych and installing Poroshenko. Manlio Dinucci notes that the coup would have been impossible had NATO not co-opted “a large part of the top echelons of the Ukrainian military hierarchy, training them for years at NATO’s Defense College.”
The post-coup government was more virulently anti-Russian than any since the end of the Soviet Union.
The 2014 coup was basically a declaration of war with Russia. With the exception of Crimea, Putin didn’t take the bait for eight long years. Years that were a financial disaster for everyone holding methane stocks. Biden visits.
April 2014. Joe Biden visits Kyiv and promotes fracking, saying “Imagine where you’d be today if you were able to tell Russia: Keep your gas. It would be a very different world you’d be facing today.” A few weeks later, Burisma, a small natural gas company that hoped to produce gas by fracking in Eastern Ukraine, announced that it had added Hunter Biden to its board of directors.
July 2014. Électricité de France (EDF)—a public entity—initiates the construction of the Dunkirk LNG Import Terminal and signs a 20-year contract with Souki’s Cheniere Energy.
2015. Nord Stream 2 project launched. It will parallel the existing Nordstream pipeline connecting Russia and Germany directly. It will meet increased demand in Western Europe.
February, 2016. Charif Souki is pushed out of Cheniere Energy, at the same time as Cheniere’s Sabine Pass makes its first shipment of LNG. As the Maidan coup failed to produce an all-out war that would shut down the Nordstream pipeline, the first buyers were Pacific; China and Japan obliged their American partners to build their own regasification plants and buy some Sabine Pass LNG as the Trump days got started. Eastern Ukraine has settled down into a low-intensity civil war.
September 2016. The Dunkirk LNG Import (regasification) terminal becomes operational, the first LNG import terminal in Europe. Électricité de France has sold its shares in the operation to Fluxys, a private company that operates with money from Belgian municipalities.
November 2016. Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump in the American election. Rather than be forced to reckon with their unpopularity, the Democratic Party construct a narrative where Russia (imagined to be under the absolute and authoritarian control of Vladimir Putin) is responsible for the election outcome. Among their base of older Americans, this narrative slots conveniently into cognitive loops formed during their Cold War childhoods. Putin’s superman image of himself is flattered by the idea that he could have such a determinative influence on American politics. That said, it would be fair to assume he’s more concerned with the mess in Ukraine, even though the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk had settled down a bit after the 2015 Minsk II agreements.
No-one notices how convenient the Russiagate narrative is for Cheniere and the rest of the American gas industry, who are beginning to find a strategy to compete against Russian pipeline gas in Eurasia.
2016-2019. Energy prices settle into a trough, and investors try to reconcile themselves to years of losing money. Sabine Pass continues its scheduled shipments with Japan and China, but it doesn’t look like the market for LNG will grow beyond that. The natural gas sector starts aggressively marketing its stocks to retail investors, as their institutional backers begin to lose faith that prices will ever rise.
May 2018. Right Sector-aligned Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko calls the Nord Stream 2 a “tragic historic mistake.” He is upset because the pipeline would bypass the Ukrainian overland pipelines. Ukraine doesn’t produce its own natural gas, but collects rents from transporting Russian gas to Europe.
July 2018. At a meeting with Donald Trump, E.U. President Juncker commits to ramping up purchases of American LNG
January 31, 2018. Germany granted Nord Stream 2 a permit for construction in territorial waters.
March 31, 2019. Zelensky won the presidential election in Ukraine as the peace candidate.
May 2019. The Ukraine Crisis Media Center, which is funded by NATO and numerous western governments, published a dramatic list of demands in a “Joint statement by civil society representatives on the first political steps of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.” The key part of this statement, set in bold type in the original, reads:
As civil society activists, we present a list of “red lines not to be crossed”. Should the President cross these red lines, such actions will inevitably lead to political instability in our country and the deterioration of international relations
This amounts to a threat of another US-backed Maidan coup.
August 19, 2019. Venture Global’s FID for Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal, planned for 2022.
October 1, 2019. Zelensky agrees to the “Steinmeier formula,”
December 2019. Trump signs into law new sanctions “on any firm that helps Russia’s state-owned gas company, Gazprom, to finish a pipeline to the European Union.” Construction on Nord Stream 2 stops.
Cheniere adds its second LNG export facility on the gulf coast, Corpus Christi.
March, 2020. Ukraine goes into lockdown for COVID-19
June, 2020. The IMF approves a $5 billion emergency loan to Ukraine due to the pandemic, as Ukraine is granted NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partner (EOP) status.
August 2020. A new LNG facility, this time operated by a competitor of Cheniere, Cameron LNG, comes online in Hackberry, LA.
September, 2020. Zelensky approves Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy which identifies Russia as the aggressor and announces Ukraine’s intention to join NATO.
November, 2020. Trump loses. The outcome of the American election is what makes Zelensky realize that he will never get American support to make peace with Russia. He has decided that his best bet is to pivot hard in the other direction, apply for NATO membership, and provoke Russia into a war.
December, 2020. A Russian ship, Akademik Cherskiy, resumes laying pipe in the Baltic sea.
January, 2021. Days after Biden’s inauguration, Zelensky bans three television stations associated with the pro-Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuck. Russia soon begins to mass thousands of troops on the border.
February 2021. Zelensky imposes sanctions on several Russian-speaking Ukrainians, including Medvedchuck, pleasing the Americans. By the way, what is Putin doing all this time? Not much, beyond looking for a way to de-escalate the situation without abandoning the Russian-speaking Ukrainian population.
April 2021: U.S. Berlin embassy spokesman Goseph Giordono-Scholz tells newspaper Tasspiegel that Joe Biden is not willing to compromise on the Nord Stream 2 project, and “is determined to use all available means to prevent the completion of” the pipeline
June 2021. The Akademik Cherisky, aided by another ship named the Fortuna, completes laying pipe for the first line of Nord Stream 2. Anthony Blinkin says that Nord Stream 2 is “inevitable.”
July 2021. Angela Merkel meets with Joe Biden. He pressures her against Nord Stream 2, but ends up allowing Germany to finish the pipeline. “Good friends can disagree,” he says.
In ongoing talks with Germany, U.S. officials are trying to limit the risks the pipeline will present to Ukraine and to European energy security, the official told POLITICO.
But…the pipeline will secure European energy. And your guy, Blinkin, just gave up and admitted defeat on Nord Stream 2. What are the risks to Ukraine? That its American partners would fail in their Rockefelleresque schemes. The risk is to a desired future state of instability that could still, at the very last minute, derail Nord Stream 2. Ted Cruz refuses to confirm any of Biden’s nominees until he re-imposes the sanctions that were blocking construction.
Merkel and Biden sign a paper that will allow Germany to finish the pipeline in exchange for unnamed “European action against Russia.”
September 2021. The second line of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is complete. The pipeline is ready to transport gas.
October 2021. Zelensky alleges that there is a Russian plot to overthrow him. He’s looking “unhinged” and “disoriented.” A month later, he visits Biden in Washington, hoping to get him to let Ukraine into NATO. Everyone is keenly aware that allowing Ukraine into NATO would be an explicit declaration of war with Russia (since NATO has been, since its founding, an anti-Russian organization).
December, 2021. Russia issues a list of security demands, including a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO. Observers have different interpretations of these demands; I found them to be surprisingly reasonable, given the history at play.
January, 2022. Calcasieu Pass first shipment. They have accelerated construction work to try to cash in on high spot prices for LNG. The facility, however “continues to face periodic reliability challenges” due to the hasty construction. They do manage to get a few cargoes off its docks, but don’t plan on delivering contracted commercial cargoes until late 2024.
January 26, 2022. The U.S. officially refuses to rule out the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, leaving Putin no choice but to go to war. If he allowed Ukraine to join NATO, he would face a massive crisis of legitimacy at home;
February 7, 2022. At a joint news conference with Chancellor Scholz, Joe Biden was significantly less coherent than the media portrayed him to be:
The first question first. If Germany — if Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the — the border of Ukraine again — then there will be — we — there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.
Q But how will you — how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.
This last statement was not conditional upon a German/Russian invasion. It was rather a resolution.
February 8 2022. Emmanuel Macron visits Moscow and then Kyiv. He reports that Vladimir Putin promised him not to worsen the crisis over Ukraine.
February 21, 2022. Russia officially recognizes the Donetsk and Lunhansk Peoples Republics.
February 22, 2022. Germany suspends certification of the Nord Stream 2. Though physically complete, it will never transport a molecule of gas. This is supposed to punish Putin for the recognition the day before, but it actually punishes European people.
February 24, 2022. INVASION. European gas prices increase 40-60% that day.
February 25, 2022. Plaquemines FID.
Plaquemines will be capable of producing 20 million tons of LNG per year. The construction site is visible from space. The plant will be fed by two 720 Megawatt power plants to power the “liquefiers.” If operated at capacity, each one of those power plants will release over 700,000 pounds of CO2 each hour, but that is far from the only climate impact of this project. Leaks, whether from the 36 liquefaction “trains” or the two 42-inch pipelines (15 and 12 miles respectively) will go unreported and unaccounted for.
March 25, 2022. Joe Biden goes to Brussels to pass new sanctions on Russia, and sells the EU 15 billion cubic meters of LNG, to be would be immediately redirected and delivered to the EU. More importantly, he also announced his goal was to scale this up to 50 bcm annually by 2030.
Every cubic meter of gas exported from Louisiana needs an import and regasification terminal in the EU. To build this infrastructure, the REPowerEU plan included euro 10 billion ($20.9 billion).
May 2, 2022. Two purchasing agreements signed to buy LNG from plants that hadn’t even been financed yet. The first was by Guvnor Group to buy 2.72 billion cubic meters annually for a term of 20 years for cargoes to Switzerland from Energy Transfer’s still-hypothetical Lake Charles LNG plant (as of this writing, ET is still hoping for a FID in 2024). The second was by Engie Services to buy 2.38 bcm annually from Rio Grande, which would not receive construction funding until 2023, for a term of 15 years, for gas bound to France.
At the earliest, those 15-20 year terms can begin in 2026. For the short-term supply crunch, these agreements are irrelevant. At this moment, a single LNG shipment earn a $200 million profit.
June 8, 2022. Six more long-term LNG purchasing agreements announced, all by Equinor for gas bound for Norway, for gas from Corpus Christi and Sabine Pass, totaling 2.16 bcm annually for a term of fifteen years.
June 10, 2022. EnBW announced two purchasing agreements for gas from a hypothetical second Calcasieu Pass plant (still without funding as of this writing) and Plaquemines for a total of 2.72 bcm annually for a term of twenty years, bound for German consumers.
June 2022. During a well-publicized military exercise called BALTOPS 22, Navy divers affix C4 explosives to the Nord Stream pipelines on the floor of the Baltic Sea.
July 12, 2022. Vitol energy announces a purchasing agreement to buy .68 bcm annually of LNG from the proposed floating LNG platform Delfin (unfunded as of this writing) for a term of fifteen years. The product will be bound for Switzerland.
August 23, 2022. Shell agrees to buy 2.86 bcm of LNG annually from Lake Charles LNG for a term of 20 years for the UK.
September 26, 2022. A Norwegian Navy surveillance plane dropped a sonar buoy and triggered the explosives. The resulting leak was the largest single methane leak in known history.
December 1, 2022. INEOS signs an agreement to buy 1.9 bcm of LNG annually for a term of 20 years from Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG, which ended up getting funding in March 2023. Cargoes bound for the UK.
December 6, 2022. Engie agrees to buy 1.2 bcm annually from Port Arthur for a term of fifteen years.
December 20, 2022. Galp agrees to buy 1.36 bcm annually from Rio Grande LNG for 20 years, for consumers in Portugal.
Year-end 2022. The global oil and gas industry made $4 trillion in profits in 2022, up from a trailing average of $1.5 trillion.
June 14, 2023. Energy prices reach their peak, 42% higher than the day before the war started on February 24, 2022.
As of August 2023, there were nine export terminals existent (though, as far as I can tell, still only Sabine Pass is regularly shipping commercial cargoes, the rest beset by mechanical failures), and three more under construction, including the massive Plaquemines facility, which is visible to the naked eye from space.
The new projects are March 20, 2023. Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG project FID. Commercial operations date for Train 1 is in 2027 and Train 2 2028.
July 12, 2023. NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG project FID, phase 1 to begin commercial operations in 2027.
February 2024 The Biden administration halts new permitting for LNG plants, but both Plaquemines and Calcasieu Pass are fully built and permitted, yet not shipping LNG yet because of “mechanical difficulties.” They are both predicted to start filling regular cargoes in 2026. Liberal environmentalists conveniently ignore this reality and declare victory.