Germany on Wednesday shrugged off Russia’s ban on oil sales to countries and companies that comply with a price cap agreed by Western allies, saying it has “no practical significance.”

“I would not like to say that it’s irrelevant but it has no practical significance,” said an economy ministry spokeswoman, adding that Germany has been preparing since early summer to do without Russian oil.

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Russia is busy pulling an Elon.

Russia is showing their weakness.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 67%. (I'm a bot)

> Germany on Wednesday shrugged off Russia's ban on oil sales to countries and companies that comply with a price cap agreed by Western allies, saying it has "No practical significance."

> "I would not like to say that it's irrelevant but it has no practical significance," said an economy ministry spokeswoman, adding that Germany has been preparing since early summer to do without Russian oil.

> Oil prices barely change as Russia unveils export ban.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: oil^#1 Russia^#2 price^#3 Germany^#4 crude^#5

There is plenty of US, Saudi and Norwegian oil available.

the reality is that much of the oil will still find it's way to banned countries, but with even less profit for Russia, and more for the middle men, who will then also have an incentive to keep Russia isolated.

and the price cap was intended to reduce Russian profits while not depriving the world of oil, so Russia is playing itself.

Then why didn't the West simply stop buying Russian oil in February last year? Obviously the supply isn't enough to last all Western countries if they don't buy Russian oil. Especially given the oil cuts OPEC plus made. If there was plenty like you say, they would have made a ban not a price cap. Now prices will increase and more money will flow into the cophers of the Kremlin basically, the west creating the opposite of its intended outcome..

This might come as an absolute shock to you. But real life isn't a video game, production takes time to ramp up, and for the last year that is exactly what the west has been doing.

Russias oil price went down, it's lost 20% since Dec 2nd.

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Amazing, everything you just said was wrong.

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Seriously Google is free. Takes 2 seconds to look up global Oil Production is up. But if that's too much work for you then you can go on believing whatever narrative suits your world view.

Oil prices this year have been still much higher the last couple years even if they went down 20 percent. This year had a mean average of 94.07 dollars per barrell.

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The resolve to present a cap means a resolve to not buy oil otherwise. The Russian ban is just a refusal with additional steps.

It's amazing how Germany was able to ditch Russian reliance on gas and oiö

I’m in Alberta Canada. The 4th biggest proven oil reserves are about a 5hour drive away. And that proven oil reserve is only 65% of Canada’s oil

And the country is under 70% of perm-a frost. Wonder how much is under there we can’t see lol

The issue with Canadian oil is that it's expensive to refine compared to a lot of other oil sources.

Well you could get cheap oil from Russia 👍

Lol.....it's like resigning because you have a new job and then your boss saying you're fired in the same conversation.

At this point it would be a bigger threat to germany if canon would stop the export of fax devices to germany ü

I'd certainly be willing to spend more buying oil from a friendly democratic neighbor this helping their economy than aiding a country attempting to annihilate its peaceful neighbor.

Go Canada!

Germany: you destroyed any reliance left when you blew up those pipes

I once had a manager say he wouldn't give me a reference. "This job won't even be on my resume" was not what Andre expected to hear in response to his threat. I was already applying for other jobs and, in fact, had not listed that one on my resume.

Yeah Oil isn’t really that rare of a resource at the end of the day. Although it is funny that back in the 70s-80s the fear with fossil fuels wasn’t so much environmental but rather we would soon run out of fossil fuel sources.

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Pretty much,

on that day the general opinion in Germany about Russian energy went from "It's difficult" to "It's over"

We couldn't at that point, but now Germany has LNG terminals running and other countries too spend the past 10 months implementing alternatives to Russian gas

The facts about the Situation changed and therefore the mood changed with it

Ah yes, one genocidal regime for another

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Oil is not gas. Germany was never that reliant in Russian oil ( where they made 10 times as much money compared to gas)

What are you talking about ? We are currently increasing our storage of gas... during the heating season. No big actor, industry or government, so much as thinks it somewhat likely that shutdowns are occuring

That's a very German thing to say.

> Actually German gas reserves are starting to get low

No, they aren't. Unless you consider storage facilities being at 89% capacity and rising to be "low".

https://interaktiv.waz.de/energie-preise-aktuell/gas/

Small Modular Reactors are going to be a game changer for Alberta if oil remains relevant for the foreseeable future. Steam extraction coupled with nuclear would be incredible.

Yeah Russia overplayed their hand hard and too early. Well they didn't really have much. The West was much smarter rolling out the sanctions bits at a time, gradually increasing pressure. Russia has nothing left to squeeze.

> Excuse me, but I thought the West had been continuing to buy gas from Russia throughout the conflict because it COULDNT simply turn on a dime and do without. So now we’re suddenly fine with that,

I don't think you know how time works. Do you know how long this war has been going on? This isn't sudden at all.

What are you talking about? It was over way before that, practically and in the publics opinion.

Russia is going all “you’ll never find anyone as good as me!” as Europe happily moves on

I think it's the other way around, it's like you being the boss, firing your employee for being a dickhead, and the employee screaming that you'll rue the day we fired him.

The price cap is on oil (not gas).

In response Russia is banning export of oil (not gas).

Speaking of gas, Germany has been spending these past few months building up their LNG infrastructure, so that they aren’t dependent on Russian gas — so if they do end up needing to drop Russia as a supplier, there won’t be anything ‘sudden’ about it.

Is there evidence that Russia was responsible for the pipeline sabotage?

Apologies for the sincere question.

The fact that Russia wasn't threatening nuclear war on the one responsible.

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With all due respect, that’s not exactly evidence.

This war has been going on since February. The situation has changed significantly since then. Do try and keep up if you’re just going to get hysterical over your lack of understanding

In world politics, courts and investigations matter little. Russia is going to blame whoever they want, and the rest of the world is not going to care.

…anyway, should be interesting to see what the Swedish investigation holds and if they’re able to prove anything concretely.

The nuance there is that the cheapest oil is long over, but as the price rises some partially depleted wells and extraction methods become competitive again.

The problem though is the implications that a group of countries at any point can fix a market. People don’t see past Russia here. America continues to do whatever it wants around the world.

They way it works is that countries that are affected by this ban already don't buy Russian oil due to separate sanctions, and it primarily affects using Western services that would have to comply with price caps on deliveries elsewhere. At most West loses some service revenue.

This Russian ban also isn't actually enacted yet (only posted) as it only comes active in February after Russian Government produces required supporting documents.

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Yea but politicians

Jumping from one baseless claim to the next I see.

German industrial output is up this year, not down. Factories are open full week. There was some panic early on in spring/summer when it was unclear whether Germany would be able to prepare for a winter without Russian gas.

Current forecasts show that Germany will get through winter just fine without rationing.

> You will have the problem that LNG is much more expensive than normal natural gas.

It’s true that LNG is more expensive. But that is not a problem.

This is the Germany I like to see.

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Yeah, same with how they push for full surveillance every year only to get shot down, they'd have pushed for russian pipes still.

Do note we had no reason to heat the past week & a half due to a heatwave keeping us at comfy temps.
We literally had no reason to use gas, and as such, no reason to import.

No it won’t. Forecasts clearly show that.

See here the optimistic and pessimistic scenarios of gas storage levels throughout winter that the German government modelled earlier this year in preparation for the winter. These scenarios are in the case of no rationing.

In the pessimistic scenario Germany would have run out of gas by the end of April. In the optimistic scenario Germany would even have still 70% gas left in storage at end of winter.

Current trend until end of December is more positive than even the most optimistic scenario.

See the graph here with the title “Reicht das Gas?”

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-gaspreis-spritpreis-energieversorgung

Never go full Musk

Slapped their dick down on Russias dinner table didnt they. Bravo.

Why is that a problem? Anyone should be able to refuse service, no?

Oil is always going to be relevant because it’s used for much more than just fuel.

right because the oil market wasn't already a fixed shitshow with opec+ and friends

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The Russian fall into irrelevance is delicious to watch.

By “a group” you mean every large economy except India and China.

Were that to be 100% accurate the middle east would not have spent so much time and money developing other income streams ready for them to take the strain as oil demand inevitably declines.

Yes, but that makes up a small fraction of the market compared to setting it on fire for energy

Something like that can't really be resolved in court anyway, so educated speculation is the best we're going to get.

Unless whoever did it screwed up and left some damning evidence behind.

Agreed, the West should have good plans in case something similar happens against it, sort of like the oil crisis in the 70's.

No thank you, gross. At least have some middleman skim most of the profits away from Russia first.

How much longer will I have to listen to this Russian cope for? Until March? May?

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But it Still gets imported, that is why our storage amount is increasing

not even that aside some singular opinions here and there.

If it just were Russians. Poles are much more at it and I doubt you will hear the end of it, the fate of Russia nothwithstanding.

Fact is Russian oil was irrelevant for Europe all the time. Oil is very easy to transport. What would really hurt Russia is a price cap and the ban of gas. In the contrary to oil, gas is much more difficult to transport it without pipelines.

I mean every other country except western countries. Most countries simply go along with America because it can and will devastate a economy that does not play with its politics, it’s essentially a bully, which thinks it’s always right

For sure but I thought we were supposed to be the better people here the righteous and fair and ethically correct country.

Refusing service and declaring you will buy something a price you pick are different things, the market picks the prices in a free market which I thought as being a real liberal I would have support over things like free speech freedom of choice freedom of speech but people’s hatred of everything these days blinds them to making rational decisions

Nr 1 item of doing business is trust, which in russian is the name of a tiny village in the northern part of siberia

Not entirely true. There were always calls from small public groups and politicians in the opposition to get Nordstream 2 running.

THAT however ended with the burst of the pipes.

Sure, one is rejecting one is regulating. There's issues like that with insulin and runaway pricing so regulation may be put in place. You believe we are in a world wide free market? You know we have lots of rules in our market, lots of taxes as well?

What? Lol

They are investigating the act though, I feel like it’s not unrealistic with satellite surveillance to have a chance of documenting which ships were near the explosions.

Unfortunately it will probably take Ukraine until the end of 2023 to win this war and beat the evil Russians so I will be able to point out that everything isn’t absolutely perfect until then.