GarryB Thu Apr 11, 2019 4:46 am
Russia doesn't have to design and build gas, it just needs to extract it and deliver it, so really it is the equivalent of printing money. A 10% price discount means slightly less income for Russia, but if that results in a happy reliable customer then who cares.
Customers that pay full price expect more and often can be lured away with other offers... ask anyone who owns property... a good reliable tennant that you can trust and pays their bills on time is worth more than someone who pays above market rent rates but could burn the house down or bugger off overseas and stiff you.
Personally I think Russia should sell its gas only to Turkey and Germany and let the other countries in Europe buy their gas from those two states so Russia does not need to care about negotiating dozens of contracts...
It would mean not worrying about transit fees of countries not maintaining pipelines or stealing from other countries by pinching their gas as it goes past... it would not be Russias problem any more...
Germany already has power in Europe, but it would make Turkey more powerful in Europe... which will annoy quite a few countries there because they tend to think of Turkey as not really european... the same way they think of Russia as not really being european either...
What I find interesting is how Russia is the one that is classified as guilty on the prices that the other nations agreed to signing. Like how Ukraine won various court cases against Russia in "international courts" because they signed a bad deal.
So nothing has really changed... Russia got the blame for the suffering of Eastern Europe, yet the Brits and French and Yanks were happy to sign off on that deal at the time to ensure the Soviets kept fighting the Germans to the last and indeed they entered the war in the Pacific as well, which was demanded by the Americans at the time who were afraid they might be left fighting for years against the Japs.