With the visit of German chancellor Olaf Scholz to Canada, there has been no shortage of media salivating at the narrative of Canada somehow sending liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe to displace Russian supply, and they keep going on about it. Power & Politics had an interview with Scholz, and the first third of it was spent with Vassy Kapelos hectoring Scholz about whether he wanted Canadian LNG, and if he told the Quebec government to stop opposing pipelines, and I’m being serious that she actually asked him this, as though he wasn’t going to diplomatically tell her that it wasn’t his place to tell them that (which he did). And while he said sure, Canadian LNG would be great, there is no way that’s going to happen. There is no infrastructure to do so. Building it takes three to five years, and even then, if there is a steady supply (good luck with that, because it’ll drive up costs for product domestically), it’ll take 25 to 30 years to make those investments in that infrastructure pay off, and we’d be well past 2050 then. (I wrote a column on this recently). It would quite literally be investing in a stranded asset. But that won’t stop Canadian media outlets from pounding on this narrative drum, over and over again. You would think that reporters and TV hosts might have done some homework to realize that there is no business case, so you look foolish by pursuing this dead-end line of questioning, but apparently not.
https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1562196541451800576
https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1562198870243028993
Ukraine Dispatch, Day 181:
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is vowing of a “powerful response” if Russia attacks the country on its Independence Day, which also will mark six months since the illegal invasion began. And American intelligence is also warning that something may happen, which is why they are urging their nationals leave the country. Russians did conduct air strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, not far from the nuclear plant, and they have been shelling near Kharkiv in the northeast. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada says that they are investigating 28,000 war crimes, including child deaths.
zelensky officially vows to take back crimea, which has been under russian occupation since 2014
‘it all began with crimea, and it will end with crimea’ pic.twitter.com/9PqXwC9DTA
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 23, 2022