With the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War, the opening of Nord Stream 2 is probably completely out of the blue. To be honest, this is a very sad story. A few years ago, Russia and Germany had very good relations. Former German Prime Minister Merkel and Russian President Putin also had deep personal relationships, especially Germany relied on Russia on energy issues.
There is no way we said in the last episode that environmental girls were praised by European politicians, and Germany also stopped almost all nuclear power plants and thermal power plants. Then, naturally, they had to buy natural gas from Russia in large quantities.
For Germany, buying Russian natural gas is a very economical right choice, especially Russia also said that the gas supply volume of Beixi No. 1 is not enough, so we invested huge amounts of money to build another Beixi No. 2 to meet Germany's rising gas demand.
people will spend money to repair pipelines for you and sell natural gas to you very cheaply to solve your domestic energy consumption problem. This is indeed a great thing. So the two sides hit it off. Beixi No. 2 is built parallel to Beixi No. 1, with an annual designed gas supply exceeding 50 billion cubic meters. However, the construction of Nord Stream 2 encountered many obstacles, mainly due to the United States' obstacles. On the one hand, the United States does not want its Western European allies to purchase large quantities of Russian natural gas, which is the so-called act of capital and enemy.
On the other hand, the United States' group of Central and Eastern European allies, what Poland Ukraine also said that if Nord Stream 2 is built, will the supply of gas pipelines buried under them be reduced? They cannot knock Russia on a transaction every year and receive billions of dollars in transit fees from Russia. Therefore, many countries have a negative attitude towards Nord Stream 2.
, especially the United States, took advantage of its long-arm jurisdiction to govern , and a large number of sanctions were imposed on the company involved in the construction of Beixi No. 2, which made this project stop and stop. It can be said that Beixi No. 2 encountered many obstacles at the beginning of its design.
Finally arrived in September 2021. Under the pressure of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the United States finally gave up sanctions on Nord Stream 2. After several years of construction, this pipeline was completed.
However, the Americans did not give it for nothing. On the one hand, they were forced to stop sanctioning the construction of Nord Stream 2. On the other hand, they immediately thought of a plan to cut off the fire, which was to instigate Ukraine to join NATO , which led to today's Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which eventually led to the entire Europe completely turning to the United States.
is now fine. As soon as the Russian-Ukrainian war started, it is no longer time to calculate the economic accounts, but to calculate the political accounts well. Today, if anyone in European countries dares to mention buying Russian energy, it is a very evil. Even the well-known Prime Minister Merkel has also encountered doubts today. Many Germans accused that it was because she was too weak to Russia, which led to Germany being kidnapped by Russian energy. Therefore, not only Beixi 2 is completely abolished and there is no possibility of opening it, but Beixi 1 has even been shut down for more than 10 days.
According to Russia, as long as the Western world's economic sanctions on Russia's economic sanctions will not be eliminated, Nord River 1 will no longer supply gas. Therefore, the ill-fated Nord River 2 will almost become impossible to open gas. Even Russia has no hope. The investment of tens of billions of euros will be completely wasted.
But for the Russians, they still have to warn Europe. They hope that Europe will understand that they don’t think that if you don’t buy energy, other countries will not buy it. Don’t think that if Norse River 2 is broken, Russia’s economic lifeline will be gone. So not long ago, the senior Russian energy officials announced that in the future they will build the Siberian Power 2 gas pipeline to China. The losses on Norse River 2 can be completely replaced by this pipeline.
Currently, Russia has a Siberian Power 1 pipeline that exports a large amount of natural gas to my country. In addition to this pipeline, several pipelines are under construction or under planning, including this Siberian Power 2 gas pipeline. According to Russian energy officials, after this pipeline is completed, the annual gas transmission volume will reach 50 billion cubic meters, which can completely replace Nord Stream 2.
The so-called West is not bright, and the East is bright. Russia is saying that they can still make money back in the Asian market. Europeans and Americans should not think that if they don’t buy Russian natural gas, they can starve Russia to death.
Of course, we are also very clear about whether Power Siberia 2 can completely replace Nord Stream 2. First of all, this is impossible in terms of time, because Power Siberia 2 is still under planning and construction will not start until 2024 at the earliest. How can it not be built for three or five years? It would be good to be completely built before 2029 and 2030.
For Russia, the next few years may be really critical, because although Nord Stream 2 has been built, it cannot supply gas at all. I hope to increase the supply of gas to China, it may have to wait a few years later. Nord Stream 1 is still facing a shutdown problem, so Russia will indeed face the problem of how to sell its natural gas and energy faster and faster in the next few years.
Therefore, Russia has actually been giving Europe a step forward recently. Russia actually hopes that after Europe encounters an unprecedented energy and economic crisis, it can think carefully. Is it a good thing for its own economic development to follow the United States without buying Russian energy? Is it possible to simply open Nord Stream No. 2? Of course, it is obvious that Europe has to consider this matter for a long time, especially after this winter. The winter in Europe is coming soon. Many European countries are in high-latitude areas, and the winter is extremely cold. In the past, many European countries had to rely on Russia's natural gas power generation to heat and make fires to cook. It is obvious that on the one hand, the natural gas supply is seriously insufficient, and on the other hand, the price is very high.
Like a few days ago, I saw in some short videos that I saw retired Germans holding natural gas bills that had risen by more than 10 times and were in tears. In the past, natural gas bills of 80 euros, 90 euros, and 100 euros per month have now risen to thousands of euros. You should know that their pension is only more than 1,000 euros, so Russia is actually gambling. Betting on this winter will cause great difficulties for Europe, making European people unable to live at all, so they may bow their heads to Russia.
In fact, Europeans cannot turn. In the past, did Europe talk about carbon emissions? Now European countries have begun to restart nuclear power plants and thermal power plants, and many Europeans have even started to chop firewood and burn fires. Some European scientists have also come forward and said it doesn’t matter. They can burn firewood. The firewood is zero carbon emissions have not increased. When the situation is really critical, Europe will also turn.
So Russia is betting that Europe will finally soften after experiencing an unusually cold winter. On the other hand, of course Russia also knows that it must actively expand its sales channels. If Europe does not buy it, it must be able to find newer channels to sell its oil and gas. So it is obvious that both the East, China and India will be huge buyers of Russian energy in the future.
Of course, this also has prerequisites. On the one hand, the pipeline must be built by itself, and on the other hand, the price must be sold low enough. In fact, for our country, we also don’t want to see the soaring energy prices. For a strong and developed economy like us, we need energy very much.
However, over the past six months, we have spent more money due to the soaring energy prices. In fact, the import of oil, natural gas, and coal in the first half of this year have been decreasing, and the amount has been increasing. Why? The price is too high. This imported inflation has seriously affected the development of my country's economy. Even a few days ago, officials from the National Development and Reform Commission came out and said that we should be prepared for the price increase in the next few months and six months. How did this price rise?
is a large part of it because of the input inflation caused by soaring energy prices. Therefore, we certainly welcome Russian energy. For Russia, this thing is not easy to sell in Europe. If you want to sell it to Asia, you have to lower the price. We can only buy it with discounts and affordability. Therefore, Russia has really invested a lot in order to attract a huge buyer like us. I will build the
pipeline for you. The price is cheaper than the market, and you are also allowed to settle in RMB. This is indeed a great benefit to our country. On the one hand, of course we want to save valuable foreign exchange resources and trade them in RMB. That is the money we printed on ourselves. On the other hand, when we use RMB and Russia to buy energy, we will undoubtedly increase the use of RMB globally. Although it is impossible to replace the US dollar, it is the beginning of the internationalization of the RMB after all.
especially when Russia agrees that we use RMB to buy its energy, other countries that provide us with energy are nervous. Saudi Iran , or African countries, they have to think that under the same conditions, will China buy Russia's energy more priority? Because people allow the use of RMB, they also allow us to use RMB to buy their energy and resources so as not to lose this big customer.
So we saw that when Australia sold coal to us last month, it also used RMB settlement. Why? Because we are a big buyer, if you want us to buy your things, you have to provide a trading method that makes me more comfortable. Of course, many friends are also worried that Russia has sold us a lot of natural gas to us now, and Russia has planned to build many gas pipelines, and in the future, it will sell us a lot of natural gas to us. So is it possible that we will get the same disease as Germany in the future? That is, we are also kidnapped by Russia on energy issues.
You should know that although China-Russia relations are good today, major countries have always only talked about interests but not friendship. Many friends are really worried that we will be kidnapped by it too. In the future, we will not face today's energy crisis and economic crisis? I think it is absolutely necessary to be prepared for danger in times of peace.
Let’s say that, although we have purchased a large amount of natural gas from Russia in the past six months, until today, Russia is not my country’s largest natural gas importer. This crown belongs to Turkmenistan . Moreover, when it comes to oil and natural gas issues, we have always paid attention to the diverse sources. We will buy oil with the Middle East, we will also buy oil with Russia, we will buy oil with many African countries, and we even buy oil with the United States. Why?
is to ensure the diversity of energy sources so that we will not be stucked by others at critical moments. The same is true for natural gas. What we really have to worry about today is not that we buy more and more natural gas from Russia, but that we have bought too much natural gas from other countries and are now going to reduce the proportion.
Someone once said that my country probably has such a plan, that the energy purchased by any country should not account for more than 15% of our imported energy. Only in this way can we ensure our energy security on the one hand, and on the other hand, we still have room for premium. If all the gas is bought with a country, let alone safety issues, you can't talk to it about this price.
And relatively speaking, although my country is a major importer of oil and natural gas, my country is also a major producer. We are different from Germany. We are very rich in resources. A large amount of our natural gas is produced by ourselves rather than imported from overseas. So on the one hand, we can produce a large amount of energy, and on the other hand, we trade with almost all oil-producing and gas-producing countries around the world. We never put eggs in one basket, so the dilemma faced by Germany today will not happen to our country.
