The scuttlebutt here is that Ukrainian people have been tap-tap-tapping into the pipeline.Furthermore, there are stainless steel canisters of nerve gas and mustard gas at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, dumped there in 1945. Or so I have read. Let's be careful out there, people!
The number of articles about Pipelineistan, Russia, Ceyhan, etc is just amazing. Alexander's Oil and Gas Connections covers every continent. It's great coverage. The phrase "Lifeline of Europe" is being used a lot. Russia is now responsible for heating every home from Westport, Ireland to Athens, Greece. It's an awesome responsibility.
Ceyhan is a new city under the sun, like San Jose is a new city, or Hong Kong, or Cancun. This Turkish city, only a few miles north of Syria's border with Israel has an oil transshipment facility as its the terminus of a Caspian Sea related pipeline. I can't remember if it's oil or gas or both. Viva Ceyhan!
Europe's Lifeline. It's a huge deal, and I can't help feeling that the coverage is describing a new swell of insular Euroattitude. It's like they're going to the mattresses, or like being locked in a country home during a blizzard with a copy of the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica or a full DVD set of the BBC's Greatest Hits. Like a furore over the advent of blimp travel, featuring the economic equivalent of Led Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. OOoohh so cozy. We can stay in and catalogue this warehouse full of my uncle's carpet remnants.
Like Britain's never ending quest for a second British Invasion, or like Ozzy and Company eating Lancashire meat pies and Wiltshire toffee every day in the middle of Los Angeles*, it seems that Europeans are feeling it. All the dignitaries are all in a tither about all the hours they are putting in and all the FTEs that are being generated. "We discussed the Ukrainian pipeline issue and then went down to the disco. We ended up by taking a dawn tour of Barcelona and had breakfast by the sea. We all piled into the two-seaters and headed back to the hotel. It was a marvelous place, an old castle, overlooking the city. Here, read the PDF. Tomorrow we have to work 'til 4 and then it's a sail across the harbor to the island for the farewell party. Then we all split up back to Frankfurt and London and Rome and Stockholm."
I have read the hunting expedition section of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet a couple of times. Not only that, as a sanguine person doing a lot of international travel on the cheap, you run into a lot of this.
The only reason for this new swell of action is that if there's a problem with Slavic people, we'll all be frozened!
The World Cup implications are serious, Russia has leverage, warm countries can just ignore it, and it doesn't seem that this situation will ever ever realign itself into another different configuration. All my natural gas comes from Louisiana and the fuel oil for the house comes from .... a port, I guess.
I don't know, it's like when Europe got used to English being an international business language. Now its Russia supplying all the electricity and heat.
Wiki link.
* Los Angeles has a lot of Mexican food.
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