Lets say I have a boiled-peanut stand. Its the only one east of the Mississippi River. I have a total lock on the boiled-peanut market and because of that, I make a lot of money selling my peanuts. The next nearest peanut stand is all the way out in Carson City and the cost of transporting boiled peanuts from there is cost-prohibitive. From time to time, I throw a tantrum and tell people around here that they can no longer buy my peanuts. Too bad, so sad -- I can do that because they have no other place where they can get boiled peanuts. I can completely control them; all the chips are on my side, I have the ultimate bargaining power and control, right? Wrong. When I pitch a fit and tell all my customers they can no longer buy my peanuts, at first Im feeling pretty smug; pretty proud of myself and my demonstrated-power over my customers. But then I notice something. I no longer have any money coming in. And because I have grown dependent on that stream of income and integrated my business so well into my customers needs, I realize that I need them as much as they need me. I realize that they have as much power over me as I do over them. So the first face-saving chance I get, Im going to try to get all my customers back; just as soon as I figure out how to do that without looking like Im crawling on my knees. Putin may be the only source of natural gas for the Ukraine, but he needs them as much as they need him. And dont be fooled by the Republicans latest talking point about how America needs to build LNG plants and start exporting LNG to the Ukraine to keep them from being dependent on Putins natural gas. You know its a talking point that has been disseminated from the top down in conservative circles when you suddenly start hearing all of them repeating something you havent heard much about before. LNG is liquid natural gas. And this new talking point is an attempt by the conservatives to gin up yet another justification for why they need to turn the liquid coming out of your kitchen-sink faucet from drinkable water, to something you can hook up to your outdoor grill for roasting your Christmas turkey; and, why you need to bolt your bookcases to the wall to withstand 150 earthquakes in one weekend like they just experienced in Oklahoma. In their way of thinking, these little inconveniences are just a necessary evil; an unavoidable byproduct of fracturing the earths inner structure in order to release natural gas that we all need. Of course, since we dont have a transoceanic pipeline to deliver the natural gas to the Ukraine, it will have to be converted to LNG so it can be shipped to the Ukraine. But this is purely a disingenuous ploy to support their unquenchable thirst for fracking. It is absolutely not cost-effective to ship LNG to the Ukraine. Natural gas has to be frozen to a minus 200 degrees to change it to LNG. To retro fit an existing natural gas processing plant to one capable of converting the gas to LNG would cost $2 billion dollars. To build one from scratch would cost $6 to $8 billion. The costs of storing the highly-explosive LNG and very carefully shipping it, would be astronomical. The prices that would have to be charged for the end product -- natural gas flowing through pipes across the Ukraine -- would make it completely unaffordable. There is no way that LNG is a viable option to compete against Putins freely-flowing natural gas. And these conservative leaders HAVE to know that. They are just counting on the rest of us not knowing it, so they can trick more people into supporting fracking.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:14:15 +0000
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