Re: Policy driven
This is not correct. To Ukraine's dismay, gas purchases were excluded from sanctions precisely because the EU needed them. It still remains legal to buy Russian oil and gas in the EU - but since December there is a price cap on gas imports.
It is correct. Sanctions were announced, gas prices rocketed. Russian oil & gas companies had assets seized and gas prices rocketed. Nord Stream mysteriously exploded, and gas prices rocketed.
It's simple cause and effect. The UK and EU weren't hitting their Net Zero and decarbonisation targets, so decided to massively increase the cost of oil & gas. Energy prices rocketed. This, for consumers is obviously a policy failure given the economic impact. So job losses, rapidly rising energy poverty, strikes over pay rises and all that general cost-of-living stuff directly related to the policy decisions of our lunatics in charge. The policies have also had little effect on Russia given there's still a huge market for their products outside of the self-sanctioned West. But it's also had an impact on those countries as well, eg the US went from having cheap energy and a 'shale boom' to it's own energy crisis. Unsuprisingly, suppliers realised exporting gas would benefit their bottom line, even at the cost of the US consumers. Also a policy not helped by other political decisions like banning pipelines, exploration & extraction licences etc etc.
I think it's slowly dawning on our useless 'leaders', but while they're still wedded to 'Net Zero', they're not going to change course. It just demonstrates to the rest of the world how impotent and incompetent they are. They sanction gas, EU member states point out their dependencies. So they carve out exemptions, and do pointless gesture policies like imposing price caps. Not sure if that includes US gas. Naturally suppliers respond by simply pointing out they're not going to sell their products at the price the EU wants.
So it's been a brilliant strategy. It's helped de-industrialise the EU, imposed massive costs via energy cost support schemes, it's drastically reduced our competiveness, caused social unrest and is actually harming our ability to support Ukraine. No industry, no weapons. No money, no aid. Meanwhile, Russia and the RoW laugh at our leaders and watch as we destroy ourselves. It's pretty amazing the way we've let our leaders defeat ourselves.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
