I ran into one of my customers today in town .....we became good friends over many years ....he bought a old farmhouse in northern France years back and lives there for six months a year , he told me of a recent trip he and his wife took some weeks back ....in their Motorhome .....the Rhine valley in Germany ......stopping in supermarkets to top up on food supplies as per normal .......lots of empty shelves ! With just ONE tin the only meat was pork and NO bacon! To use his words “ they are f..ked over there we could not believe it ...Germany the powerhouse of Europe “ you do not see that on the six o clock news over here do we ! He said ....I was about to ask him about France but the traffic warden arrival put pay to that .....mind you he said as he moved his car I am noticing some shortages in Tesco’s where we shop ! ....call in anytime we are back at the house .......we will I replied ........bring fish n chips it’s your turn from five years back .
G is as straight as a gun barrel I believe every word of his account ! Have we anyone else on here that could shed more light ? .....please do !
Germany more than any European country put its oil and gas supplies in the hands of the Russians( a bit like we in the UK did with electricity and EDF!) and Russia shut the pipeline (for maintenance they said but its still shut) after the sanctions started to bite.
G called in this morning to catch up, he sold his french farmhouse a few months back ......it sold within a week ! Which was a shock for over there .....normally it can take up to 12 / 18 months .
I did ask about the french situation super markets and such .....lts not that bad he said , some shortages but not that noticeable .....but people are worried about fuel costs , food costs , heating costs .....his place was rural but it’s a different story in the big towns and cities .....yellow vests ! The french do not and will not except any shit and will bring a stop to any threat where their way of life is concerned especially the farmers ! .....with all the increased costs of fuel and fertiliser ......there will be trouble coming ahead .
The shutdown of the pipeline was more than maintenance as you suspect SS.
The Russians had farmed out the tech and maintenance of those lines to Haliburton and Shell. When the Ukraine invasion began all those techs were pulled out of Russia and they were left to run their own pipeline and they were not up to the job.
The international companies were not dummies and they had refused to train the Russian techs to the skill level they needed to run without them.
A pipeline is a complex transmission system even when automated, and once one is closed down, especially if done out of sequence, it generally must be opened by hand at each valve and pump station in the proper order.
When a line is shut down from the well head to the final deliver point it can take up to two years to open it for use again. You don't just turn it on like a water hose.
Has no one noted that Putin waited until his girl Angela Merkil retired before he pulled this stunt? Or he warned her and she retired to avoid taking the fall.
Most folks don't seem to realize that she was one of his trainees on the east side of the wall for decades. It was her administration that set her nation up for this misery, shutting down their own power output, trying to put a country nearly on the artic circle on green power and import their survival resources from Russia.
There could be no outcome other than extreme hardship or submit to blackmail. Apparently no one in Germany remembers what the Russians did to them on their last visit.