Entering Sixth Month of War, Ukraine Faces Thorny Dilemmas (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Entering a sixth month of war, Ukraine faces thorny dilemmas":

KYIV, Ukraine — The explosion is invariably spectacular: a gigantic spewing fireball, often followed by a slow-motion airborne cascade of secondary blasts. As soon as such footage finds its way online, exultant Ukrainian commentary erupts: “It’s HIMARS o’clock!” As its war with Russia enters a sixth month, Ukraine has been celebrating recent battlefield successes generated by sophisticated launchers known as High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. The Pentagon has provided or promised a dozen of the advanced systems, capable of hitting targets up to 50 miles away.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor on Feb. 24, the conflict has veered from Moscow’s initial failed effort to capture the capital, Kyiv, to substantial Ukrainian territorial losses this summer in the country’s eastern industrial heartland.

Now the combat calculus appears to be shifting yet again, with Ukrainian forces, assisted by their new weaponry, striking dozens of sites, including Russian ammunition dumps, troop concentrations and bridges. That is seen as likely preparation for an offensive to regain Russian-held territory in the country’s south, near the Black Sea coast.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said last week during a virtual meeting of 50 countries that are donating equipment to Ukraine. “I think that everyone here understands the difference that they’ve made on the ground.”

That battlefield effect, however, leaves Ukrainian officials treading a fine line.

President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials continue to issue forceful pleas for more Western weaponry, declaring bluntly that Ukraine cannot seize the military initiative without far more donated armaments. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, made an unusual personal appearance Wednesday before Congress, where she graphically invoked civilian suffering at Russian hands while also appealing for additional military materiel.

But at the same time, Zelensky and his lieutenants seek to depict a landscape in which their armed forces already may be poised to gain the upper hand — implicitly promising that the country’s sacrifice of lives, together with Western allies’ growing economic and energy strains stemming from the war, will ultimately prove worthwhile.

“We have a significant potential for the advance of our forces on the front, and for the infliction of significant new losses on the occupiers,” Zelensky said late Thursday in his nightly address to the country.

The two messages aren’t necessarily contradictory. Calibrating them, however, is a difficult task.

Too much triumphalism, while boosting domestic morale, can undercut the urgency of appeals for more Western weaponry. By contrast, any appearance of defeatism could accelerate outside calls for Zelensky to agree to territorial concessions to Moscow and perhaps end the fighting before winter sets in.

The advent of cold weather will mean Ukraine’s European allies face a far more intense Kremlin-inflicted energy crunch. Austin acknowledged as much, citing the challenges in keeping up the pressure on Russia.

“We’re pushing hard to maintain and intensify the momentum of donations,” he said. “There’s no question that this will always be hard work, making sure that we maintain unity.”

On the world stage, Ukraine consistently portrays Russia as a perfidious power that cannot be trusted to honor international agreements — and Moscow’s actions often make that characterization compelling.

On Saturday, Russian missiles struck Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa, the Ukrainian military said, only one day after the sealing of a U.N.- and Turkish-brokered deal to allow grain exports from Black Sea ports meant to ease global food shortfalls caused by the war.

“That’s all you should know about Russians and agreements,” tweeted Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. He argued that the episode bolstered the case for more and better Western weapons for Ukraine.

With the advent of a sixth month of fighting — a psychological crossing into long-war territory — the Kremlin is saying it will ramp up its military aims, brushing aside an earlier stated focus on the industrial eastern heartland, much of which it has seized...

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich Attacks Oil Companies, Calls for 'Windfall Tax on Higher Profits' (VIDEO)

Secretary Reich is a smart guy --- and he's always been a man of the left --- but he used to be more free-market, more for regular labor union agitation and better wages, etc. 

Nowadays, he sounds more and more like a doctrinaire Marxist. He's a Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley, so he's being marinated in the nasty stew of woke campus leftism. 

And here he's calling for a "windfall tax" on oil companies. 

Extreme tax proposals are de rigueur for Democrats these days. Bernie Sanders is calling for a 90 percent marginal tax rate on the wealthy. Thankfully, the idiot Dems will be out of power next January. President Biden's going to have to compromise on reviving domestic energy production, and if things go right, a Republican will win the 2024 general election.

Honestly, I love the guy, but please let it not be Donald Trump. One Trump term was enough.

Watch, at CNN, "CEOs at major oil companies come under fire for high gas prices."

Germany: What if the Gas Is Cut Off?

At Der Spiegel, "German Industry Prepares for Worst-Case Scenario":

German industry and the government in Berlin are ill-prepared for a possible halt in supplies of natural gas from Russia. A new emergency plan is being developed to prevent an economic meltdown if deliveries cease.

You can find something from Hinrich Mählmann just about everywhere you look in Germany. His company, the Otto Fuchs Group, founded in 1910, literally delivers the things that make the country move. They include wheels and coupling systems for railroads, engine components for the aviation industry and even battery housings for electric cars. Mählmann also sells thermally insulated windows and doors through its subsidiary Schüco. The supplier has revenues of just under 3 billion euros annually and employs 10,000 people.

If the family business in the small town of Meinerzhagen in the western German state of North-Rhine Westphalia was suddenly no longer able to manufacture its goods, the German economy would have a problem. Without Mählmann’s upstream products, manufacturing in entire industries would be at risk – from car factories to construction.

Until now, such a horror scenario seemed unthinkable. To supply what German industry so urgently needs, the company operates aluminum presses "as heavy as the Eiffel Tower," as Mählmann says, plus large furnaces and smelters. The plants consume vast quantities of natural gas, an energy source that the group, like thousands of other companies across Germany, obtains to a large extent from Russia.

Currently, Mählmann is busy preparing for the possibility of the day when natural gas from Russia may no longer flow. It would be a "catastrophe," says the businessman. Turning off a gas-powered furnace for several hours a day is virtually impossible, he says. Doing so would cool them down, and bringing it back up to temperature would consume a disproportionate amount of time and energy. And replacing gas with electric power is out of the question: It would make no sense environmentally or economically. Relocating the machines would also be impossible due to their sheer size and the cost. "The plant would have to shut down," says Mählmann.

He pleads for gas imports not to be frozen completely and for the energy source to instead be rationed if necessary to at least "keep everything running on the back burner."

Germany on the back burner, a country in emergency mode. These are the kinds of considerations Germany is making right now across all sectors, industries and trades. What if Russia turns off the gas? Or the European Union bows to the growing pressure and imposes an import ban itself? Who would then get the much-coveted raw material? Which rules would fall into place? As of today, it seems certain that private consumers and their heating systems would be given the priority. Drug manufacturers and hospitals as well as public infrastructure are also at the top of the list.

After that, things get tricky. Should those industries be supplied with gas, at least in part, whose products are urgently needed by others for further processing? Or is it really a matter of only the most urgent needs, a war economy in which it is the security of supply counts and no longer the continuity of industry?

Germany is extremely ill-prepared for this worst-case scenario. A "Gas Emergency Plan for the Republic of Germany" has been in place since September 2019. But it is based on a fundamental miscalculation: In the very first pages, it states that the natural gas supply situation in Germany is "highly secure and reliable." And that the likelihood of a massive supply crisis is "very low." ...

Keep reading. 

Natural-Gas Industry Gets Boost as Biden Shifts Stance

Baby steps. Baby steps.

At WSJ, "Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose as Biden softened position against fossil fuels":

President Biden’s pledge to boost U.S. liquefied natural-gas exports to Europe marks a further retreat from his hard-line stance against fossil fuels, sending share prices surging for natural-gas companies.

The president, who campaigned on a platform to transition the U.S. to cleaner energy, said Friday the U.S. is working to ship 50 billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe annually through at least 2030 to help the continent wean itself from dependence on Russian supplies.

The announcement came a day after Democrats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission backtracked on new environmental policies, suspending implementation of heightened requirements on reviews that industry officials and Republicans said would impede gas-pipeline development.

Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose 9% on average Friday as major stock indexes were mixed. Shares of EQT Corp and Southwestern Energy Co., two large producers, shot up to close about 12% and 16% higher.

Cheniere Energy Inc., LNG 5.46% the top U.S. exporter, was up about 5.5%. Tellurian Inc., which is seeking financing for an LNG project, soared 21%.

The gas industry’s prospects have been a concern among the sector’s executives because of Mr. Biden’s stance against fossil fuels. But the president has softened some of his positions in the wake of rising energy costs, which have been driven in part by the economic rebound from Covid-19, and more recently by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The White House pivot has also put the U.S. and its vast oil and gas reserves in shale rock back at the center of a global scramble for energy resources as a bulwark against petrostates and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer.

Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global and a noted oil-industry historian, called recent developments “a huge turn.”

“There’s a recognition now that shale—and particularly LNG—is a real geopolitical asset,” Mr. Yergin said.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have said they are still committed to ending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, including gas, and will continue to fund renewable energy as part of their work with European allies. But they also acknowledged the need to deal with the reliance that exists today.

“While gas is still a substantial part of the energy mix, we want to make sure that the Europeans do not have to source that gas from Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday.

Toby Rice, chief executive of top U.S. natural-gas producer EQT, said the Biden administration’s shift is an extremely encouraging political signal that natural gas will play a key role in the world’s future energy mix.

Mr. Rice said the U.S. could sharply increase LNG exports over time if companies build thousands of miles of new pipelines and billions worth of new LNG facilities. But unleashing that will require broader support for that infrastructure and speeding up the sluggish permitting process, he said.

“The problem we face is it takes longer to permit something than it takes us to build it,” Mr. Rice said. “The faster we move, the faster we move toward achieving our climate goals and providing energy security for people around the world.” Shippers of LNG have already sent most U.S. cargoes to European destinations this year, as prices have skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion. American exporters are moving cargoes as fast as physically possible and are on pace to send a record 11.4 billion cubic feet a day of LNG overseas this month, with more than 60% bound for Europe, according to market intelligence firm Kpler.

FERC has approved 13 LNG facilities across the U.S. that have remained unbuilt with the combined capacity to export about 25 billion cubic feet each day, according to FERC’s February update. Companies haven’t begun construction on those largely because they haven’t yet gathered enough supply agreements with customers overseas to finance the construction of those facilities.

Part of the arrangement between the U.S. and Europe is to ensure that European countries also come through to show they can take more U.S. gas. They are to build out their infrastructure to accept up to 50 billion cubic meters of additional U.S. supply a year between now and 2030, Mr. Sullivan said.

Before the Russian invasion, Biden administration officials had been hesitant about putting U.S. development money into fossil-fuel projects abroad...