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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: TobagoJack who wrote (189064)6/21/2022 6:33:44 PM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217573
 
(4) All about supply chains, a geometry, mathematical, and logic puzzle bloomberg.com

Canada Working With Germany on Options to Restore Vital Gas Flow

Penalties against Russia left Nord Stream turbine stuck abroad Canada trying to ‘find pathway’ to solve issue, minister says

Elena Mazneva
21 June 2022, 23:40 GMT+8



The starting point of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, in Ust-Luga, Russia.Source: Bloomberg

Canada is wrestling with how to comply with sanctions on Russia’s oil-and-gas business without penalizing big customer -- and Ottawa ally -- Germany at the same time, a Cabinet minister said.

Penalties on Russia for invading Ukraine left a turbine needed to help run the Nord Stream pipeline stranded in Canada. Soon after, Russia’s state-run gas giant Gazprom PJSC slashed supplies through the pipeline, the biggest gas link to the European Union, to just 40% of capacity.

That compounded a price surge in Europe, and prompted German and Italian leaders to question whether Gazprom’s move was politically motivated rather than caused by technical issues as claimed. Governments across Europe went on high alert amid a mounting possibility of rationing, while Germany, the Netherlands and Austria revived coal plants to help ward off potential shortages in the winter, when demand is highest.

“We want to respect the sanctions because the sanctions were put into place for a reason,” Canada Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in an interview. “That being said, the intent of the sanctions was never to cause significant pain to Germany, which is one of our closest friends and allies. So we are very seized with this issue.”

The turbines were manufactured in Canada and need to be regularly sent back there for maintenance by Germany’s Siemens Energy AG. One of them was being overhauled in Montreal, but now it can’t be returned as Canadian sanctions imposed this month prohibit vital technical services from being exported to Russia’s fossil-fuel industry.

Other turbines are still in Russia, but not all of them are working, according to Gazprom. The energy giant cited orders from the state safety regulator to stop using equipment that’s due for its regular maintenance.

“We are talking to Germany, trying to find a pathway through which we can actually enable the flow of gas,” Wilkinson said. “There may be different options that we can look at.”

Russia is ready to supply the European Union, but turbines have to be returned after maintenance, the Kremlin said this week.

Nord Stream’s entry point, the Portovaya compressor station in Russia, needs six major turbines to pump gas into the Baltic Sea pipeline at full capacity. But only two of them are currently in operation, according to a person familiar with the situation.

On top of that, Nord Stream is scheduled to be shut down for 10 days next month to go through annual works.



To: TobagoJack who wrote (189064)6/21/2022 11:03:17 PM
From: Maurice Winn2 Recommendations

Recommended By
marcher
Secret_Agent_Man

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217573
 
Ah, good old MTBE = methyl tertiary butyl ether. Back in the early 1980s, when crude oil had doubled and doubled again and then once more, from $2 a barrel in 1970 to $40 a barrel by 1980, we [BP Oil International and everyone else] were trying to get gasoline or similar in all sorts of ways. Meanwhile lead was no longer acceptable to avoid knock, or pinking, in engines, so methanol, ethanol, MTBE and whatnot were considered and included to get economical octane number increase. If memory serves me still, MMT was another option. Hey presto, Google confirms in an instant.
en.wikipedia.org MMT = not Magic Money Theory but similar in that I don't think [despite being now decades out of date] that it was good, just as Magic Money Theory is a terrible idea as we are seeing now with financial systems in disaster mode. Maybe it's still being used. I guess that modern engines and electronic systems can much better use plain hydrocarbons without the pollution of engine and exhaust from such stuff.

What's needed [especially if we believe the climate panic over the Greenhouse Effect], are swarms of nuclear reactors, billions of photovoltaic panels, billions of 7 Second Swap Stop Service Station batteries for an instant small battery recharge of cars and to provide a vast sink for photovoltaic, wind and other intermittent electricity supplies, while slowly charging batteries for longer life, and to do it when the electricity is cheap, and to enable cars to have little batteries and to weigh half as much [instead of being 2 ton brutes] and to save vast hours waiting around at charging stations when there are things to do and places to go. Also so that very little space is needed for charging cars [hundreds of them parked in rows recharging is absurd].

MTBE, MMT, lead, are so last century.

My fantasy was a gas [methane] to gasoline single step using zeolite catalyst but I never got that done and I don't know whether anyone has done. Methane is cheap. MMT and MTBE are not. Gas to gasoline was done in New Plymouth using a Mobil process via an intermediate methanol step, but that made it too wasteful of energy though it did give really good octane number in some process streams [our BP laboratory did the octane number testing for the Syngas plant in the 1980s before it was shut down as being too costly and wasteful of methanol which became more valuable than the synthetic petrol by the late 1980s].

I have no idea how the economics and technology have changed over the last 30 years. Apparently not much if MTBE is still an issue.

Mqurice