...with Lisa Stansfield
with Tina Turner
Barry White solo
Barry White & Lisa Stansfield (steamy...)
Barry White solo (Rhythm...)
Sonntag, August 31, 2008
Donnerstag, August 28, 2008
Dienstag, August 26, 2008
New York Times
August 25, 2008
In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.
New York Times
August 25, 2008
In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.
The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.
The Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, took no questions. But he asserted that the files — which included an array of plans for nuclear arms and technologies, among them a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design — had been destroyed so that they would never fall into terrorist hands.
Behind that official explanation, though, is a far more intriguing tale of spies, moles and the compromises that governments make in the name of national security.
The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.
Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the C.I.A. paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s bomb program, reveal Iran’s atomic labors and, ultimately, undo Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market.
In addition, American and European officials said, the Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.
The relationship with the Tinners “was very significant,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began. “That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.
Yet even as American officials describe the relationship as a major intelligence coup, compromises were made. Officials say the C.I.A. feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners’ relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran’s nuclear program. Destruction of the files, C.I.A. officials suspected, would undermine the case and could set their informants free.
“We were very happy they were destroyed,” a senior intelligence official in Washington said of the files.
But in Europe, there is much consternation. Analysts studying Dr. Khan’s network worry that by destroying the files to prevent their spread, the Swiss government may have obscured the investigative trail. It is unclear who among Dr. Khan’s customers — a list that is known to include Iran, Libya and North Korea but that may extend further — got the illicit material, much of it contained in easily transmitted electronic designs.
The West’s most important questions about the Khan network have been consistently deflected by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who resigned last Monday. He refused to account for the bomb designs that got away or to let American investigators question Dr. Khan, perhaps the only man to know who else received the atomic blueprints. President Bush, eager for Pakistan’s aid against terrorism, never pressed Mr. Musharraf for answers.
“Maybe that labyrinth held clues to another client or another rogue state,” said a European official angered at the destruction.
The Swiss judge in charge of the Tinner case, Andreas Müller, is not terribly happy either. He said he had no warning of the planned destruction and is now trying to determine what, if anything, remains of the case against Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Urs and Marco.
Some details of the links between the Tinners and American intelligence have been revealed in news reports and in recent books, most notably “The Nuclear Jihadist,” a biography of Dr. Khan by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. But recent interviews in the United States and Europe by The New York Times have provided a fuller portrait of the relationship — especially the involvement of all three Tinners, the large amounts of money they received and the C.I.A.’s extensive efforts on their behalf. Virtually all the officials interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss matters that remain classified.
The destroyed evidence, decades of records of the Tinners’ activities, included not only bomb and centrifuge plans but also documents linking the family to the C.I.A., officials said. One contract, a European intelligence official said, described a C.I.A. front company’s agreement to pay the smugglers $1 million for black-market secrets. The front company listed an address three blocks from the White House.
The C.I.A. declined to comment on the Tinner case, but a spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, called the disruption of Dr. Khan’s network “a genuine intelligence success.”
With the evidence files destroyed and a trial in question, it is unlikely that the full story of the Tinners will be told any time soon. If it is, it is unlikely to come from the elder Mr. Tinner.
Approached at his home in Haag, Switzerland, near the Liechtenstein border, Mr. Tinner, 71, was polite but firm in his silence. “I have an agreement not to talk,” he told a reporter.
Beginning a Double Life
An inventor and mechanical engineer, Friedrich Tinner got his start in Swiss companies that make vacuum technology, mazes of pipes, pumps and valves used in many industries. Mr. Tinner received United States patents for his innovative vacuum valves.
By definition, his devices were so-called dual-use products with peacetime or wartime applications. Governments often feel torn between promoting such goods as commercial boons and blocking them as security risks.
As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads.
Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.
In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated. Spy satellites can be fooled. Documents can lie. Electronic taps can mislead. But a well-placed mole can work quietly behind the scenes to get at the truth.
For instance, the United States had gathered circumstantial evidence that Iran wanted an atom bomb. Suddenly it had a direct view into clandestine Iranian procurement of centrifuges and other important nuclear items.
“It was a confirmation,” recalled Dr. Samore, the former national security official who is now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That was much more significant than Libya,” because that country’s atomic program was in its infancy whereas Iran’s was rushing toward maturity.
Despite considerable income from their illicit trade, the Tinners had money problems, a European intelligence official said. Eventually, Urs Tinner persuaded his father and younger brother to join him as moles, and they began double lives, supplying Dr. Khan with precision manufacturing gear and helping run a centrifuge plant in Malaysia even as their cooperation with the United States deepened.
At the time, Washington was stepping up efforts to penetrate Libya’s bomb program. In early 2003, the European official said, the Tinners and C.I.A. agents met at a hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, to discuss cooperative terms. Several months later, in Jenins, a Swiss mountain village, Marco Tinner signed a contract dated June 21, 2003, with two C.I.A. agents, the official said.
The contract outlined the sale of rights that the Tinners held for manufacturing vacuum gear, and of proprietary information about the devices. In exchange, $1 million would be paid to Traco Group International, a front company Marco Tinner had established in Road Town, the capital of the British Virgin Islands, on the island of Tortola.
In the contract, according to the European intelligence official, the two C.I.A. agents used cover names — W. James Kinsman and Sean D. Mahaffey — and identified their employer as Big Black River Technologies Inc. In military and intelligence work, “black” means clandestine. In the contract, Black River gave an address on I Street in Washington, the intelligence official said. But no business directory lists the company, and employees in the mailroom at the address said they had no records for a company of that name.
Four months after the signing of the contract, American and European authorities seized cargoes of centrifuge parts bound for Libya. “The Tinners were a source,” a former Bush administration official said.
Two other officials credited the Tinners with helping end the Libyan bomb program. In Libya, investigators found the rudiments of a centrifuge plant and a blueprint for a basic atom bomb, courtesy of Dr. Khan’s network. The Bush administration celebrated Libya’s abandonment as a breakthrough in arms control.
But the secret lives of the Tinners began to unravel. The Malaysian police issued a report naming them as central members of Dr. Khan’s network. An official of VP Bank Ltd., Traco’s business agent in the Virgin Islands, said it ended that relationship in early 2004, when Marco Tinner was exposed.
Under growing pressure, Dr. Khan confessed. His clients turned out to include not only Libya but Iran and North Korea, and his collaborators turned out to be legion.
“We will find you,” Mr. Bush said in February 2004 of Dr. Khan’s associates, “and we’re not going to rest until you are stopped.”
Acts of Sabotage
After the Tinners were arrested, Swiss and other European authorities began to scrutinize their confiscated files and to conduct wide inquiries. European investigators discovered not only that the Tinners had spied for Washington, but that the men and their insider information had helped the C.I.A. sabotage atomic gear bound for Libya and Iran. A former American official confirmed the disruptions, saying the technical architect of the operation was “a mad-scientist type” who took pleasure in devising dirty tricks.
An American intelligence official, while refusing to discuss specifics of the sabotage operation or the Tinners’ relationship with the C.I.A., said efforts to cripple equipment headed to rogue nuclear states “buy us some time and space.” With Iran presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb, he added, “that may be the best we can hope for.”
The sabotage first came to light, diplomats and officials said, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Iran and Libya in 2003 and 2004 and discovered identical vacuum pumps that had been damaged cleverly so that they looked perfectly fine but failed to operate properly. They traced the route of the defective parts from Pfeiffer Vacuum in Germany to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. There, according to a European official who studied the case, nuclear experts had made sure the pumps “wouldn’t work.”
A more serious disruption involved a power supply shipped to Iran from Turkey, where Dr. Khan’s network did business with two makers of industrial control equipment.
The Iranians installed the power supply at their uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. But in early 2006, it failed, causing 50 centrifuges to explode — a serious, if temporary, setback to Iran’s efforts to master the manufacture of nuclear fuel, the hardest part of building a bomb. (Iran says its nuclear efforts are for electricity, not weapons.)
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, told a reporter last year that Iranian investigators found that the power supply had been manipulated.
After the episode, he added, “we checked all the imported instruments.”
Discussions With Washington
In 2005, Swiss authorities began asking the United States for help in the Tinner case. Among other things, they wanted information about the Libyan centrifuge program to press charges of criminal export violations. For more than a year, the Swiss made repeated requests. Washington ignored them.
“Its lack of assistance needlessly complicates this important investigation,” David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington, told Congress in May 2006. Mr. Albright said he had helped Swiss prosecutors write to the State Department.
The Swiss turned to the I.A.E.A. for help in assessing the Tinner cache. European officials said the agency was surprised to find multiple warhead plans and judged that most had originated in Pakistan. The country denied that Dr. Khan had access to nuclear weapon designs and questioned the agency’s conclusions.
In late July 2007, according to Swiss federal statements, the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, flew to Washington for talks with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the attorney general; and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director.
Officially, the statements said, the main topic was “cooperation in the criminal prosecution of terrorist activities.” But the real agenda was what to do about the Tinners.
A former Bush administration official said different government agencies had differing views of the case. The State Department wanted the bomb plans destroyed as a way to stem nuclear proliferation, while the C.I.A. wanted to protect its methods for combating illicit nuclear trade.
The C.I.A. also wanted to help the Tinners. “If a key source is prosecuted,” a former senior official involved in the case said, “what message does that send when you try to recruit other informants?”
American officials discussed a range of possible outcomes with the Swiss and expressed their clear preferences. The best result, they said, would be turning over the family’s materials to the United States. Acceptable would be destroying them. Worst, according to the former administration official, would have been making them public in a criminal trial, where defense lawyers would have probably exposed as much American involvement as possible in hopes of getting their clients off the hook.
A Furor Over Destroyed Files
Last March, Mr. Müller became the examining magistrate in the Tinner case, charged with assessing if a trial was warranted. Soon after, he was quoted as saying the evidence files contained “obvious holes.” Sketchy reports of deleted computer files and shredded documents had been circulating, but he was the first identified official to hint at a widespread destruction. Then, on May 23, the Swiss president, Mr. Couchepin, revealed that Switzerland had begun a series of extraordinary actions just days after Mr. Blocher, the justice minister, returned from Washington.
Swiss citizens are prohibited from aiding foreign spies. But in his statement, the president said that in late August 2007, the government canceled a criminal case against the Tinners for suspicions of aiding a foreign government. Though unmentioned, the C.I.A. seemed to peer out from his statement.
On Nov. 14, his statement continued, the government decided to destroy “the comprehensive holding of the electronic files and documents” seized from the Tinners. The most dangerous items, the president said, included “detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges for the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, as well as for guided missile delivery systems.” International atomic inspectors, he added, supervised the destruction.
Mr. Couchepin said keeping the documents “was incompatible with Switzerland’s obligations” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and added, “Under all circumstances, this information was not to reach the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state.”
The statement provoked a political furor. Some politicians and columnists accused Switzerland of surrendering to Washington’s agenda and violating Swiss neutrality. Among the strongest critics was Dick Marty, a prominent Swiss senator. “We could have respected the treaty by avoiding their publication and putting them under lock and key,” he was quoted as saying on Swissinfo, the Web site of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Destroying them, he added, “ could lead to the collapse of the legal case.”
Many European officials dismissed the government’s arguments about terrorists and rogue states as empty.
“If they had kept the material in federal possession for years, why not keep holding it?” asked Victor Mauer, a senior official at the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “Their explanation is not convincing.”
An Action’s Repercussions
In an interview, a senior European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A. said the destruction could have repercussions far beyond the criminal case.
For one thing, he said, the international atomic agency had been allowed to examine only parts of the archive. He called it “a good sample” and judged that the agency had missed no significant clues. Even so, he said, the agency might “come to regret” its inability to examine the materials further for insights into hidden remnants of Dr. Khan’s network.
And while the Swiss president made much of the proliferation danger, the diplomat insisted that the warhead designs were in many respects sketchy and incomplete. “These are almost like studies — bits and pieces,” he said, adding that they “wouldn’t be enough to let you build a replica.”
So while they might have little or no value for a terrorist with no atomic experience, the plans might prove quite helpful for an ambitious state intent on building a nuclear arsenal. He said the agency had no evidence that Iran had acquired the bomb plans.
The diplomat added that the Swiss had “lots of possibilities” other than destruction. He said they had no legal obligation to destroy the files under the nonproliferation treaty, and could have put them under I.A.E.A. seal in Vienna or Switzerland.
Several European officials speculated that Washington might actually have kept secret copies of the archive. A senior American official said the United States had reviewed the material but declined to say if there were copies.
As for the Tinners, the father was released in 2006, pending legal action. In a brief interview at his home, Mr. Tinner pleaded ignorance about basic aspects of the criminal case, such as where the authorities kept the materials that had belonged to him and his sons. “The newspapers know more about these things than I do,” he insisted.
Should the case fall apart, the Tinners would join a growing list of freed associates of Dr. Khan. In June, Malaysia released the network’s chief operating officer, B. S. A. Tahir, saying he was no longer a national security threat. The authorities have kept the Tinner brothers in jail for fear that they might flee the country. In late May, a Swiss court rejected their bail application, and early this month, the ruling was upheld. But the judges also told the authorities that they could not hold the brothers indefinitely without charging them.
With much of the evidence gone, the magistrate, Mr. Müller, expressed frustration at finding “no answers to the really interesting questions in this case.” He declined to predict how it might turn out.
“At the moment,” he said, “it is impossible to make any schedule, since the case is in many aspects extraordinary.”
Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt, and Uta Harnischfeger from Zurich.
August 25, 2008
In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.
New York Times
August 25, 2008
In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.
The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.
The Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, took no questions. But he asserted that the files — which included an array of plans for nuclear arms and technologies, among them a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design — had been destroyed so that they would never fall into terrorist hands.
Behind that official explanation, though, is a far more intriguing tale of spies, moles and the compromises that governments make in the name of national security.
The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.
Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the C.I.A. paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s bomb program, reveal Iran’s atomic labors and, ultimately, undo Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market.
In addition, American and European officials said, the Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.
The relationship with the Tinners “was very significant,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began. “That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.
Yet even as American officials describe the relationship as a major intelligence coup, compromises were made. Officials say the C.I.A. feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners’ relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran’s nuclear program. Destruction of the files, C.I.A. officials suspected, would undermine the case and could set their informants free.
“We were very happy they were destroyed,” a senior intelligence official in Washington said of the files.
But in Europe, there is much consternation. Analysts studying Dr. Khan’s network worry that by destroying the files to prevent their spread, the Swiss government may have obscured the investigative trail. It is unclear who among Dr. Khan’s customers — a list that is known to include Iran, Libya and North Korea but that may extend further — got the illicit material, much of it contained in easily transmitted electronic designs.
The West’s most important questions about the Khan network have been consistently deflected by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who resigned last Monday. He refused to account for the bomb designs that got away or to let American investigators question Dr. Khan, perhaps the only man to know who else received the atomic blueprints. President Bush, eager for Pakistan’s aid against terrorism, never pressed Mr. Musharraf for answers.
“Maybe that labyrinth held clues to another client or another rogue state,” said a European official angered at the destruction.
The Swiss judge in charge of the Tinner case, Andreas Müller, is not terribly happy either. He said he had no warning of the planned destruction and is now trying to determine what, if anything, remains of the case against Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Urs and Marco.
Some details of the links between the Tinners and American intelligence have been revealed in news reports and in recent books, most notably “The Nuclear Jihadist,” a biography of Dr. Khan by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. But recent interviews in the United States and Europe by The New York Times have provided a fuller portrait of the relationship — especially the involvement of all three Tinners, the large amounts of money they received and the C.I.A.’s extensive efforts on their behalf. Virtually all the officials interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss matters that remain classified.
The destroyed evidence, decades of records of the Tinners’ activities, included not only bomb and centrifuge plans but also documents linking the family to the C.I.A., officials said. One contract, a European intelligence official said, described a C.I.A. front company’s agreement to pay the smugglers $1 million for black-market secrets. The front company listed an address three blocks from the White House.
The C.I.A. declined to comment on the Tinner case, but a spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, called the disruption of Dr. Khan’s network “a genuine intelligence success.”
With the evidence files destroyed and a trial in question, it is unlikely that the full story of the Tinners will be told any time soon. If it is, it is unlikely to come from the elder Mr. Tinner.
Approached at his home in Haag, Switzerland, near the Liechtenstein border, Mr. Tinner, 71, was polite but firm in his silence. “I have an agreement not to talk,” he told a reporter.
Beginning a Double Life
An inventor and mechanical engineer, Friedrich Tinner got his start in Swiss companies that make vacuum technology, mazes of pipes, pumps and valves used in many industries. Mr. Tinner received United States patents for his innovative vacuum valves.
By definition, his devices were so-called dual-use products with peacetime or wartime applications. Governments often feel torn between promoting such goods as commercial boons and blocking them as security risks.
As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads.
Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.
In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated. Spy satellites can be fooled. Documents can lie. Electronic taps can mislead. But a well-placed mole can work quietly behind the scenes to get at the truth.
For instance, the United States had gathered circumstantial evidence that Iran wanted an atom bomb. Suddenly it had a direct view into clandestine Iranian procurement of centrifuges and other important nuclear items.
“It was a confirmation,” recalled Dr. Samore, the former national security official who is now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That was much more significant than Libya,” because that country’s atomic program was in its infancy whereas Iran’s was rushing toward maturity.
Despite considerable income from their illicit trade, the Tinners had money problems, a European intelligence official said. Eventually, Urs Tinner persuaded his father and younger brother to join him as moles, and they began double lives, supplying Dr. Khan with precision manufacturing gear and helping run a centrifuge plant in Malaysia even as their cooperation with the United States deepened.
At the time, Washington was stepping up efforts to penetrate Libya’s bomb program. In early 2003, the European official said, the Tinners and C.I.A. agents met at a hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, to discuss cooperative terms. Several months later, in Jenins, a Swiss mountain village, Marco Tinner signed a contract dated June 21, 2003, with two C.I.A. agents, the official said.
The contract outlined the sale of rights that the Tinners held for manufacturing vacuum gear, and of proprietary information about the devices. In exchange, $1 million would be paid to Traco Group International, a front company Marco Tinner had established in Road Town, the capital of the British Virgin Islands, on the island of Tortola.
In the contract, according to the European intelligence official, the two C.I.A. agents used cover names — W. James Kinsman and Sean D. Mahaffey — and identified their employer as Big Black River Technologies Inc. In military and intelligence work, “black” means clandestine. In the contract, Black River gave an address on I Street in Washington, the intelligence official said. But no business directory lists the company, and employees in the mailroom at the address said they had no records for a company of that name.
Four months after the signing of the contract, American and European authorities seized cargoes of centrifuge parts bound for Libya. “The Tinners were a source,” a former Bush administration official said.
Two other officials credited the Tinners with helping end the Libyan bomb program. In Libya, investigators found the rudiments of a centrifuge plant and a blueprint for a basic atom bomb, courtesy of Dr. Khan’s network. The Bush administration celebrated Libya’s abandonment as a breakthrough in arms control.
But the secret lives of the Tinners began to unravel. The Malaysian police issued a report naming them as central members of Dr. Khan’s network. An official of VP Bank Ltd., Traco’s business agent in the Virgin Islands, said it ended that relationship in early 2004, when Marco Tinner was exposed.
Under growing pressure, Dr. Khan confessed. His clients turned out to include not only Libya but Iran and North Korea, and his collaborators turned out to be legion.
“We will find you,” Mr. Bush said in February 2004 of Dr. Khan’s associates, “and we’re not going to rest until you are stopped.”
Acts of Sabotage
After the Tinners were arrested, Swiss and other European authorities began to scrutinize their confiscated files and to conduct wide inquiries. European investigators discovered not only that the Tinners had spied for Washington, but that the men and their insider information had helped the C.I.A. sabotage atomic gear bound for Libya and Iran. A former American official confirmed the disruptions, saying the technical architect of the operation was “a mad-scientist type” who took pleasure in devising dirty tricks.
An American intelligence official, while refusing to discuss specifics of the sabotage operation or the Tinners’ relationship with the C.I.A., said efforts to cripple equipment headed to rogue nuclear states “buy us some time and space.” With Iran presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb, he added, “that may be the best we can hope for.”
The sabotage first came to light, diplomats and officials said, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Iran and Libya in 2003 and 2004 and discovered identical vacuum pumps that had been damaged cleverly so that they looked perfectly fine but failed to operate properly. They traced the route of the defective parts from Pfeiffer Vacuum in Germany to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. There, according to a European official who studied the case, nuclear experts had made sure the pumps “wouldn’t work.”
A more serious disruption involved a power supply shipped to Iran from Turkey, where Dr. Khan’s network did business with two makers of industrial control equipment.
The Iranians installed the power supply at their uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. But in early 2006, it failed, causing 50 centrifuges to explode — a serious, if temporary, setback to Iran’s efforts to master the manufacture of nuclear fuel, the hardest part of building a bomb. (Iran says its nuclear efforts are for electricity, not weapons.)
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, told a reporter last year that Iranian investigators found that the power supply had been manipulated.
After the episode, he added, “we checked all the imported instruments.”
Discussions With Washington
In 2005, Swiss authorities began asking the United States for help in the Tinner case. Among other things, they wanted information about the Libyan centrifuge program to press charges of criminal export violations. For more than a year, the Swiss made repeated requests. Washington ignored them.
“Its lack of assistance needlessly complicates this important investigation,” David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington, told Congress in May 2006. Mr. Albright said he had helped Swiss prosecutors write to the State Department.
The Swiss turned to the I.A.E.A. for help in assessing the Tinner cache. European officials said the agency was surprised to find multiple warhead plans and judged that most had originated in Pakistan. The country denied that Dr. Khan had access to nuclear weapon designs and questioned the agency’s conclusions.
In late July 2007, according to Swiss federal statements, the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, flew to Washington for talks with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the attorney general; and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director.
Officially, the statements said, the main topic was “cooperation in the criminal prosecution of terrorist activities.” But the real agenda was what to do about the Tinners.
A former Bush administration official said different government agencies had differing views of the case. The State Department wanted the bomb plans destroyed as a way to stem nuclear proliferation, while the C.I.A. wanted to protect its methods for combating illicit nuclear trade.
The C.I.A. also wanted to help the Tinners. “If a key source is prosecuted,” a former senior official involved in the case said, “what message does that send when you try to recruit other informants?”
American officials discussed a range of possible outcomes with the Swiss and expressed their clear preferences. The best result, they said, would be turning over the family’s materials to the United States. Acceptable would be destroying them. Worst, according to the former administration official, would have been making them public in a criminal trial, where defense lawyers would have probably exposed as much American involvement as possible in hopes of getting their clients off the hook.
A Furor Over Destroyed Files
Last March, Mr. Müller became the examining magistrate in the Tinner case, charged with assessing if a trial was warranted. Soon after, he was quoted as saying the evidence files contained “obvious holes.” Sketchy reports of deleted computer files and shredded documents had been circulating, but he was the first identified official to hint at a widespread destruction. Then, on May 23, the Swiss president, Mr. Couchepin, revealed that Switzerland had begun a series of extraordinary actions just days after Mr. Blocher, the justice minister, returned from Washington.
Swiss citizens are prohibited from aiding foreign spies. But in his statement, the president said that in late August 2007, the government canceled a criminal case against the Tinners for suspicions of aiding a foreign government. Though unmentioned, the C.I.A. seemed to peer out from his statement.
On Nov. 14, his statement continued, the government decided to destroy “the comprehensive holding of the electronic files and documents” seized from the Tinners. The most dangerous items, the president said, included “detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges for the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, as well as for guided missile delivery systems.” International atomic inspectors, he added, supervised the destruction.
Mr. Couchepin said keeping the documents “was incompatible with Switzerland’s obligations” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and added, “Under all circumstances, this information was not to reach the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state.”
The statement provoked a political furor. Some politicians and columnists accused Switzerland of surrendering to Washington’s agenda and violating Swiss neutrality. Among the strongest critics was Dick Marty, a prominent Swiss senator. “We could have respected the treaty by avoiding their publication and putting them under lock and key,” he was quoted as saying on Swissinfo, the Web site of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Destroying them, he added, “ could lead to the collapse of the legal case.”
Many European officials dismissed the government’s arguments about terrorists and rogue states as empty.
“If they had kept the material in federal possession for years, why not keep holding it?” asked Victor Mauer, a senior official at the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “Their explanation is not convincing.”
An Action’s Repercussions
In an interview, a senior European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A. said the destruction could have repercussions far beyond the criminal case.
For one thing, he said, the international atomic agency had been allowed to examine only parts of the archive. He called it “a good sample” and judged that the agency had missed no significant clues. Even so, he said, the agency might “come to regret” its inability to examine the materials further for insights into hidden remnants of Dr. Khan’s network.
And while the Swiss president made much of the proliferation danger, the diplomat insisted that the warhead designs were in many respects sketchy and incomplete. “These are almost like studies — bits and pieces,” he said, adding that they “wouldn’t be enough to let you build a replica.”
So while they might have little or no value for a terrorist with no atomic experience, the plans might prove quite helpful for an ambitious state intent on building a nuclear arsenal. He said the agency had no evidence that Iran had acquired the bomb plans.
The diplomat added that the Swiss had “lots of possibilities” other than destruction. He said they had no legal obligation to destroy the files under the nonproliferation treaty, and could have put them under I.A.E.A. seal in Vienna or Switzerland.
Several European officials speculated that Washington might actually have kept secret copies of the archive. A senior American official said the United States had reviewed the material but declined to say if there were copies.
As for the Tinners, the father was released in 2006, pending legal action. In a brief interview at his home, Mr. Tinner pleaded ignorance about basic aspects of the criminal case, such as where the authorities kept the materials that had belonged to him and his sons. “The newspapers know more about these things than I do,” he insisted.
Should the case fall apart, the Tinners would join a growing list of freed associates of Dr. Khan. In June, Malaysia released the network’s chief operating officer, B. S. A. Tahir, saying he was no longer a national security threat. The authorities have kept the Tinner brothers in jail for fear that they might flee the country. In late May, a Swiss court rejected their bail application, and early this month, the ruling was upheld. But the judges also told the authorities that they could not hold the brothers indefinitely without charging them.
With much of the evidence gone, the magistrate, Mr. Müller, expressed frustration at finding “no answers to the really interesting questions in this case.” He declined to predict how it might turn out.
“At the moment,” he said, “it is impossible to make any schedule, since the case is in many aspects extraordinary.”
Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt, and Uta Harnischfeger from Zurich.
Montag, August 25, 2008
Not yet up to olympic standard - Pump pump........
keep on pumping..... watch closely!
;-)
(better with sound on)
;-)
(better with sound on)
Mittwoch, August 20, 2008
NYT: Mikhail Gorbachev on Georgia
New York Times
August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Moscow
THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?
New York Times
August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Moscow
THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?
Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.
The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.
The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.
The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.
It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace.
If this military misadventure was a surprise for the Georgian leader’s foreign patrons, so much the worse. It looks like a classic wag-the-dog story.
Mr. Saakashvili had been lavished with praise for being a staunch American ally and a real democrat — and for helping out in Iraq. Now America’s friend has wrought disorder, and all of us — the Europeans and, most important, the region’s innocent civilians — must pick up the pieces.
Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of “this is our land,” “we are liberating our land,” is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.
The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.
What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.
The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.
In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.
These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?
Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?
There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.
Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?
A bipartisan commission led by Senator Chuck Hagel and former Senator Gary Hart has recently been established at Harvard to report on American-Russian relations to Congress and the next president. It includes serious people, and, judging by the commission’s early statements, its members understand the importance of Russia and the importance of constructive bilateral relations.
But the members of this commission should be careful. Their mandate is to present “policy recommendations for a new administration to advance America’s national interests in relations with Russia.” If that alone is the goal, then I doubt that much good will come out of it. If, however, the commission is ready to also consider the interests of the other side and of common security, it may actually help rebuild trust between Russia and the United States and allow them to start doing useful work together.
Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.
August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Moscow
THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?
New York Times
August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Moscow
THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?
Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.
The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.
The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.
The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.
It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace.
If this military misadventure was a surprise for the Georgian leader’s foreign patrons, so much the worse. It looks like a classic wag-the-dog story.
Mr. Saakashvili had been lavished with praise for being a staunch American ally and a real democrat — and for helping out in Iraq. Now America’s friend has wrought disorder, and all of us — the Europeans and, most important, the region’s innocent civilians — must pick up the pieces.
Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of “this is our land,” “we are liberating our land,” is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.
The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.
What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.
The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.
In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.
These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?
Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?
There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.
Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?
A bipartisan commission led by Senator Chuck Hagel and former Senator Gary Hart has recently been established at Harvard to report on American-Russian relations to Congress and the next president. It includes serious people, and, judging by the commission’s early statements, its members understand the importance of Russia and the importance of constructive bilateral relations.
But the members of this commission should be careful. Their mandate is to present “policy recommendations for a new administration to advance America’s national interests in relations with Russia.” If that alone is the goal, then I doubt that much good will come out of it. If, however, the commission is ready to also consider the interests of the other side and of common security, it may actually help rebuild trust between Russia and the United States and allow them to start doing useful work together.
Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.
Montag, August 18, 2008
NYT's Maureen Dowd on G.W. Bush and Russia
New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.
As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.
His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.
We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)
If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.
When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.”
But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil.
What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension.
Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”
President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”)
The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze.
But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like.
W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics.
“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.”
As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.
As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.
His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.
We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)
If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.
When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.”
But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil.
What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension.
Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”
President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”)
The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze.
But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like.
W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics.
“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.”
As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”
Sonntag, August 17, 2008
NYT's Maureen Dowd on G.W. Bush and Russia
New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.
As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.
His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.
We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)
If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.
When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.”
But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil.
What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension.
Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”
President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”)
The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze.
But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like.
W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics.
“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.”
As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.
Talk about your fearful symmetry.
After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.
He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.
As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.
His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.
We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)
If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.
When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.”
But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil.
What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension.
Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”
President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”)
The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze.
But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like.
W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics.
“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.”
As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”
Freitag, August 08, 2008
NZZ Online: Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
NZZ
7. August 2008, 13:10, NZZ Online
Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
Die Schweiz soll ihren Treibstoffverbrauch mit griffigen Massnahmen senken
Die Schweiz sollte sich schon heute auf eine Erdölknappheit einstellen und den Treibstoffverbrauch rasch reduzieren. Das rät die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften in einer neuen Studie. Denn die Schweiz verbrauche überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff.
NZZ
7. August 2008, 13:10, NZZ Online
Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
Die Schweiz soll ihren Treibstoffverbrauch mit griffigen Massnahmen senken
Die Schweiz sollte sich schon heute auf eine Erdölknappheit einstellen und den Treibstoffverbrauch rasch reduzieren. Das rät die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften in einer neuen Studie. Denn die Schweiz verbrauche überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff.
(chs/ap) Immer deutlicher zeichne sich ab, dass die globale Erdölproduktion in absehbarer Zeit ihren Zenit erreichen und danach unwiederbringlich zurückgehen werde, schreibt die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften (SATW). Sie geht davon aus, dass das die höchst mögliche Fördermenge an Erdöl innerhalb der nächsten 20 Jahre erreicht wird.
Im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern ist die Schweiz laut SATW überdurchschnittlich stark von Erdöl abhängig. Sie deckt 57 Prozent ihres gesamten Energiebedarfs mit Erdöl. Deshalb müsse sich die Schweiz schon jetzt auf mögliche Engpässe in der Erdölversorgung einstellen und den Verbrauch so weit als möglich reduzieren.
Es sei erst ansatzweise zu erkennen, welche Konsequenzen der Kampf um die begrenzten Ressourcen haben werde. Fest stehe jedoch, dass sich die grossen Erdölfirmen und die geostrategischen Akteure bereits jetzt auf die Zeit nach dem so genannten «Peak Oil» vorbereiteten.
Verbrauch jährlich um zwei Prozent senken
Vor allem der Umgang mit Treibstoffen sei zu überdenken, verlangen die Forscher. Denn anders als bei den Brennstoffen sei ein vollständiger Ersatz für Benzin und Diesel in absehbarer Zeit nicht zu erwarten. Die fossilen Energieträger für Heizungen lassen sich heute schon vollständig ersetzen.
Laut der Studie verbrauchen die Autofahrer in der Schweiz im europäischen Vergleich überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff. Hier könnt in den kommenden Jahren viel gespart werden, erklären die Forscher der SATW. Sie schlagen als verbindliches Ziel vor, den Treibstoffverbrauch jährlich um mindestens zwei Prozent zu senken, statt jedes Jahr mehr Treibstoff zu verbrauchen.
Treibstoffpreise erhöhen
Die Studie «Erdölknappheit und Mobilität in der Schweiz» kommt zum Schluss, dass grundsätzlich bis zu 60 Prozent des Treibstoffs eingespart werden könnten. Dazu brauche es aber griffige marktwirtschaftliche Instrumente, hohe Treibstoffpreise und strengere staatliche Vorschriften. Die bisherigen Erfahrungen zeigten nämlich, dass freiwillige Massnahmen und Anreizsysteme kaum Wirkung zeigten.
Die Studie wird Ende August im Rahmen der Veranstaltung «Mobilität 2030» im Detail vorgestellt. Die SATW ist ein Netzwerk von Persönlichkeiten, die sich seit 1981 dafür einsetzen, die Technik zum Wohl der Gesellschaft zu fördern und das Verständnis für Technik zu stärken. Ihr gehören rund 240 Einzelmitglieder und 60 Mitgliedgesellschaften an.
7. August 2008, 13:10, NZZ Online
Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
Die Schweiz soll ihren Treibstoffverbrauch mit griffigen Massnahmen senken
Die Schweiz sollte sich schon heute auf eine Erdölknappheit einstellen und den Treibstoffverbrauch rasch reduzieren. Das rät die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften in einer neuen Studie. Denn die Schweiz verbrauche überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff.
NZZ
7. August 2008, 13:10, NZZ Online
Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
Die Schweiz soll ihren Treibstoffverbrauch mit griffigen Massnahmen senken
Die Schweiz sollte sich schon heute auf eine Erdölknappheit einstellen und den Treibstoffverbrauch rasch reduzieren. Das rät die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften in einer neuen Studie. Denn die Schweiz verbrauche überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff.
(chs/ap) Immer deutlicher zeichne sich ab, dass die globale Erdölproduktion in absehbarer Zeit ihren Zenit erreichen und danach unwiederbringlich zurückgehen werde, schreibt die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften (SATW). Sie geht davon aus, dass das die höchst mögliche Fördermenge an Erdöl innerhalb der nächsten 20 Jahre erreicht wird.
Im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern ist die Schweiz laut SATW überdurchschnittlich stark von Erdöl abhängig. Sie deckt 57 Prozent ihres gesamten Energiebedarfs mit Erdöl. Deshalb müsse sich die Schweiz schon jetzt auf mögliche Engpässe in der Erdölversorgung einstellen und den Verbrauch so weit als möglich reduzieren.
Es sei erst ansatzweise zu erkennen, welche Konsequenzen der Kampf um die begrenzten Ressourcen haben werde. Fest stehe jedoch, dass sich die grossen Erdölfirmen und die geostrategischen Akteure bereits jetzt auf die Zeit nach dem so genannten «Peak Oil» vorbereiteten.
Verbrauch jährlich um zwei Prozent senken
Vor allem der Umgang mit Treibstoffen sei zu überdenken, verlangen die Forscher. Denn anders als bei den Brennstoffen sei ein vollständiger Ersatz für Benzin und Diesel in absehbarer Zeit nicht zu erwarten. Die fossilen Energieträger für Heizungen lassen sich heute schon vollständig ersetzen.
Laut der Studie verbrauchen die Autofahrer in der Schweiz im europäischen Vergleich überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff. Hier könnt in den kommenden Jahren viel gespart werden, erklären die Forscher der SATW. Sie schlagen als verbindliches Ziel vor, den Treibstoffverbrauch jährlich um mindestens zwei Prozent zu senken, statt jedes Jahr mehr Treibstoff zu verbrauchen.
Treibstoffpreise erhöhen
Die Studie «Erdölknappheit und Mobilität in der Schweiz» kommt zum Schluss, dass grundsätzlich bis zu 60 Prozent des Treibstoffs eingespart werden könnten. Dazu brauche es aber griffige marktwirtschaftliche Instrumente, hohe Treibstoffpreise und strengere staatliche Vorschriften. Die bisherigen Erfahrungen zeigten nämlich, dass freiwillige Massnahmen und Anreizsysteme kaum Wirkung zeigten.
Die Studie wird Ende August im Rahmen der Veranstaltung «Mobilität 2030» im Detail vorgestellt. Die SATW ist ein Netzwerk von Persönlichkeiten, die sich seit 1981 dafür einsetzen, die Technik zum Wohl der Gesellschaft zu fördern und das Verständnis für Technik zu stärken. Ihr gehören rund 240 Einzelmitglieder und 60 Mitgliedgesellschaften an.
Mittwoch, August 06, 2008
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Although the price of oil has fallen back from its $147-a-barrel high, Britain's leading energy companies still expect consumers to face bigger energy bills this year. MPs are unhappy. Yesterday they claimed that the market is not functioning properly and urged the Government to introduce a windfall tax on utility companies to help families.
However, a battle for political supremacy in far-off Ukraine is likely to have just as big an influence on European gas prices in coming months as the fluctuations on global energy markets.
Britain now imports 21bn cubic metres of gas every year since its North Sea reserves started falling. Some imports come by ship as liquified natural gas and some has to be bought in the European markets which is then piped over to the UK mainland from the Continent.
But much of Europe's gas is imported from Russia through pipelines that cross Ukraine. It is the control of those pipelines that is now the subject of a tense political tussle between Ukraine's President Victor Yushchenko and his former ally turned rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
At the heart of the politicians' struggle is an oligarch whose influence will play a major part in dictating the price of gas in Britain's wholesale markets.
President Yushchenko believes the existing arrangements should remain and that current prices for gas transit payments should not be reviewed. He believes that the existing deal, whereby 55bn cubic metres of gas are delivered to Ukraine at $179.50 per cubic metre, is the best possible one. But he faces formidable opposition.
Behind Tymoshenko's plan, known in Ukraine as the "change of concept", is Gayduk. Like Tymoshenko, Gayduk was formerly an ally of President Yushchenko but has fallen out with him over the gas transit question.
Tymoshenko made Gayduk her chief adviser earlier this year. He is the head of a business conglomerate called the Donbass Industrial Union (DIU) but little else is known about "the quiet Donetskian", as he is called, except that he is one of Ukraine's most powerful oligarchs.
He made his fortune, estimated to be in the region of $5bn, between 1998 and 2001 supplying gas to the Donbass region, where half of Ukraine's industry is located.
A Tymoshenko representative, however, states that her critics are wrong to focus on Gayduk. "Tymoshenko's long-term strategy is all about transparency," he said. "We've always said there should be no middleman. It is better if Ukraine's state agency NaftagasUkraini can buy direct from Russia. I've never heard of any suggestion that Vitaly Gayduk would be involved."
The political conflict between Tymoshenko and Yuschenko is expected to come to a head at the next presidential elections, likely to be held in November. According to a broad range of western and Ukrainian political analysts, if Tymoshenko replaces Yuschenko as president, or manages to usurp presidential power to her prime minister's office, she will implement her plans to change the gas transit arrangements.
"The result of there being no middleman will be that direct gas supplies from Russia will actually increase the price of gas, not decrease it," says Weiss. "Russia will have a greater influence on the price of gas. Ukrainian industrialists will then lobby for a new middleman. The new middleman will be Gayduk and DIU."
Tymoshenko has claimed that changing how gas is transported across Ukraine is a fight against "Gazprom's and the Kremlin's price dictatorship", but her apparent opposition to the Kremlin is at odds with her ally Gayduk's connections in Russia. He is close to the Russian gas exporter Gazmetall which in turn has close connections to the Kremlin.
Gayduk's DIU business has been attempting to negotiate a merger with Gazmetall whose leaders - principally Alisher Usmanov - are very close to the Kremlin's ruling elite under Dmitry Medvedev and, formerly, Vladimir Putin. Under the presidency of Medvedev in Moscow, the activities of Gazmetall in Ukraine have been growing significantly.
Another partner of DIU is Andrei Kostin, head of Russia's state bank, Vneshtorgbank, and a close friend of Putin. Gayduk also has close connections with Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, who together own the Russian steelmaker Evraz.
This Russian and Ukranian political intrigue over who controls the gas being piped to us in the West comes at a time when Western Europe's home-grown production of gas is in steep decline.
According to statistics from Eurogas, production fell by 4.9pc in 2006 and by 7pc in 2007, and this fall in production is set to continue ever more sharply. Norway is the main indigenous provider of gas in Western Europe, supplying 18pc of the EU's needs.
The UK's 21bn cubic metres of imported gas each year is steadily rising, while at the same time Western Europe's indigenous gas production declines. Already 10 EU countries are almost entirely dependent for their natural gas supplies on Russian and CIS gas production, with Ukraine as the transit country.
Ukraine is the vital link for Western Europe, and the prices we pay for the transit of gas - as well as the price for the gas itself - will be reflected in our industrial and domestic bills.
We can try wearing an extra jumper this winter, but the price of gas looks as if it is rising inexorably and the obscure political and business machinations in Ukraine will play an important part.
Vitaly Gayduk has made a huge personal fortune in gas trading and ownership of Ukrainian energy companies. But he is not simply a businessman, he is playing a pivotal role in a looming political crisis that threatens to send gas prices higher.
His influence on the Russian and Ukrainian gas markets that are so key to the UK came to the fore in the recent "gas wars" between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia sought to use its energy leverage for political gain, a tactic it has used several times with EU countries such as Lithuania. It was Gayduk who negotiated a solution to the row.
President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko, former allies since the Orange Revolution in 2004, are locked in a mounting conflict over the price of the gas that is piped across the Ukraine. The country's role as the transit country for 73pc of Western Europe's gas being exported by Russia and the CIS countries makes it vital to the EU's energy markets. What happens in the Ukraine affects what happens further west.
At the heart of the conflict is Tymoshenko's desire to abolish an intermediary arrangement that currently involves gas coming from Russia passing through a Ukrainian company called RosUkrEnergo. Instead she plans to buy gas directly from Russia and the CIS countries, through NaftagasUkrainy, controlled by her government. This is a move that most independent analysts agree will raise the price of gas for consumers in Western Europe.
"Such a course, abolishing a middleman, will increase the price of natural gas and will cause instability in the Ukraine", according to Lidia Lowson at the American Centre for Political Monitoring. "From this instability Tymoshenko will be able to impose her own middleman to calm the situation. That man will be Gayduk."
When contacted, Gayduk's office said he was unavailable for comment.
The reason that the price of gas will rise if bought directly rather than through an intermediary is that its price will be fixed by governments - principally Ukraine's and Russia's - rather than by organisations that operate through commercial criteria.
"Without an intermediary, the governments of Tymoshenko and [Dmitry] Medvedev will be able to dictate prices," Inna Weiss of the Central Group of European Political Monitoring says. "With the existing situation there is a clear interest in co-operation and good relationships with Western Europe. That is what Yushchenko represents."
Last week Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom, met with Tymoshenko to discuss the gradual rise in the price of gas from $179.50 to more than $400 per cubic metre.
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Although the price of oil has fallen back from its $147-a-barrel high, Britain's leading energy companies still expect consumers to face bigger energy bills this year. MPs are unhappy. Yesterday they claimed that the market is not functioning properly and urged the Government to introduce a windfall tax on utility companies to help families.
However, a battle for political supremacy in far-off Ukraine is likely to have just as big an influence on European gas prices in coming months as the fluctuations on global energy markets.
Britain now imports 21bn cubic metres of gas every year since its North Sea reserves started falling. Some imports come by ship as liquified natural gas and some has to be bought in the European markets which is then piped over to the UK mainland from the Continent.
But much of Europe's gas is imported from Russia through pipelines that cross Ukraine. It is the control of those pipelines that is now the subject of a tense political tussle between Ukraine's President Victor Yushchenko and his former ally turned rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
At the heart of the politicians' struggle is an oligarch whose influence will play a major part in dictating the price of gas in Britain's wholesale markets.
President Yushchenko believes the existing arrangements should remain and that current prices for gas transit payments should not be reviewed. He believes that the existing deal, whereby 55bn cubic metres of gas are delivered to Ukraine at $179.50 per cubic metre, is the best possible one. But he faces formidable opposition.
Behind Tymoshenko's plan, known in Ukraine as the "change of concept", is Gayduk. Like Tymoshenko, Gayduk was formerly an ally of President Yushchenko but has fallen out with him over the gas transit question.
Tymoshenko made Gayduk her chief adviser earlier this year. He is the head of a business conglomerate called the Donbass Industrial Union (DIU) but little else is known about "the quiet Donetskian", as he is called, except that he is one of Ukraine's most powerful oligarchs.
He made his fortune, estimated to be in the region of $5bn, between 1998 and 2001 supplying gas to the Donbass region, where half of Ukraine's industry is located.
A Tymoshenko representative, however, states that her critics are wrong to focus on Gayduk. "Tymoshenko's long-term strategy is all about transparency," he said. "We've always said there should be no middleman. It is better if Ukraine's state agency NaftagasUkraini can buy direct from Russia. I've never heard of any suggestion that Vitaly Gayduk would be involved."
The political conflict between Tymoshenko and Yuschenko is expected to come to a head at the next presidential elections, likely to be held in November. According to a broad range of western and Ukrainian political analysts, if Tymoshenko replaces Yuschenko as president, or manages to usurp presidential power to her prime minister's office, she will implement her plans to change the gas transit arrangements.
"The result of there being no middleman will be that direct gas supplies from Russia will actually increase the price of gas, not decrease it," says Weiss. "Russia will have a greater influence on the price of gas. Ukrainian industrialists will then lobby for a new middleman. The new middleman will be Gayduk and DIU."
Tymoshenko has claimed that changing how gas is transported across Ukraine is a fight against "Gazprom's and the Kremlin's price dictatorship", but her apparent opposition to the Kremlin is at odds with her ally Gayduk's connections in Russia. He is close to the Russian gas exporter Gazmetall which in turn has close connections to the Kremlin.
Gayduk's DIU business has been attempting to negotiate a merger with Gazmetall whose leaders - principally Alisher Usmanov - are very close to the Kremlin's ruling elite under Dmitry Medvedev and, formerly, Vladimir Putin. Under the presidency of Medvedev in Moscow, the activities of Gazmetall in Ukraine have been growing significantly.
Another partner of DIU is Andrei Kostin, head of Russia's state bank, Vneshtorgbank, and a close friend of Putin. Gayduk also has close connections with Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, who together own the Russian steelmaker Evraz.
This Russian and Ukranian political intrigue over who controls the gas being piped to us in the West comes at a time when Western Europe's home-grown production of gas is in steep decline.
According to statistics from Eurogas, production fell by 4.9pc in 2006 and by 7pc in 2007, and this fall in production is set to continue ever more sharply. Norway is the main indigenous provider of gas in Western Europe, supplying 18pc of the EU's needs.
The UK's 21bn cubic metres of imported gas each year is steadily rising, while at the same time Western Europe's indigenous gas production declines. Already 10 EU countries are almost entirely dependent for their natural gas supplies on Russian and CIS gas production, with Ukraine as the transit country.
Ukraine is the vital link for Western Europe, and the prices we pay for the transit of gas - as well as the price for the gas itself - will be reflected in our industrial and domestic bills.
We can try wearing an extra jumper this winter, but the price of gas looks as if it is rising inexorably and the obscure political and business machinations in Ukraine will play an important part.
Vitaly Gayduk has made a huge personal fortune in gas trading and ownership of Ukrainian energy companies. But he is not simply a businessman, he is playing a pivotal role in a looming political crisis that threatens to send gas prices higher.
His influence on the Russian and Ukrainian gas markets that are so key to the UK came to the fore in the recent "gas wars" between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia sought to use its energy leverage for political gain, a tactic it has used several times with EU countries such as Lithuania. It was Gayduk who negotiated a solution to the row.
President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko, former allies since the Orange Revolution in 2004, are locked in a mounting conflict over the price of the gas that is piped across the Ukraine. The country's role as the transit country for 73pc of Western Europe's gas being exported by Russia and the CIS countries makes it vital to the EU's energy markets. What happens in the Ukraine affects what happens further west.
At the heart of the conflict is Tymoshenko's desire to abolish an intermediary arrangement that currently involves gas coming from Russia passing through a Ukrainian company called RosUkrEnergo. Instead she plans to buy gas directly from Russia and the CIS countries, through NaftagasUkrainy, controlled by her government. This is a move that most independent analysts agree will raise the price of gas for consumers in Western Europe.
"Such a course, abolishing a middleman, will increase the price of natural gas and will cause instability in the Ukraine", according to Lidia Lowson at the American Centre for Political Monitoring. "From this instability Tymoshenko will be able to impose her own middleman to calm the situation. That man will be Gayduk."
When contacted, Gayduk's office said he was unavailable for comment.
The reason that the price of gas will rise if bought directly rather than through an intermediary is that its price will be fixed by governments - principally Ukraine's and Russia's - rather than by organisations that operate through commercial criteria.
"Without an intermediary, the governments of Tymoshenko and [Dmitry] Medvedev will be able to dictate prices," Inna Weiss of the Central Group of European Political Monitoring says. "With the existing situation there is a clear interest in co-operation and good relationships with Western Europe. That is what Yushchenko represents."
Last week Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom, met with Tymoshenko to discuss the gradual rise in the price of gas from $179.50 to more than $400 per cubic metre.
Dienstag, August 05, 2008
NZZ: «Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
NZZ
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
Vor gut einem halben Jahrhundert, im Jahr 1956, präsentierte ein amerikanischer Geophysiker, M. King Hubbert (1903–1989), erstmals die Hypothese des «peak oil» (PO), wonach jedes Ölfeld betreffend seine Fördermenge von seiner Erschliessung bis zur Erschöpfung eine sogenannte Glockenkurve durchläuft. Seine Prognose, dass der Peak für die kontinentalen Ölfelder der USA Anfang der siebziger Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts erreicht sein werde, wurde bestätigt. Seither sind die Erdölimporte der USA auf über 70 Prozent ihres Gesamtbedarfs gestiegen, während das Land noch Anfang der sechziger Jahre nahezu selbstversorgend war. Ähnliche Entwicklungen waren bis jetzt in allen Ölfeldern der Welt zu beobachten, und es gibt bis anhin keine Anzeichen dafür, dass Hubberts Annahmen nicht zutreffen würden.
Fördermaximum im nächsten Jahrzehnt
Die am leichtesten zugänglichen Ölvorkommen sind längst entdeckt und zu einem grossen Teil auch bereits ausgebeutet. Daraus ergibt sich eine Kurve für die weltweite Ölförderungsmenge, welche ebenfalls durch einen Maximalwert gekennzeichnet ist. Experten wie der sehr erfahrene und angesehene Erdölgeologe Colin Campbell setzen den Zeitpunkt des PO auf etwa 2011 an, bei einer Fördermenge von weniger als 100 Millionen Barrel pro Tag (heute etwa 87 Millionen). Natürlich sind solche Angaben mit einer gewissen Unsicherheit behaftet, es besteht aber unter unabhängigen Fachleuten kaum mehr ein Zweifel darüber, dass der PO im nächsten Jahrzehnt eintreten wird.
Nur gewisse Interessenvertreter beharren auf der Behauptung, die Erdölproduktion werde weltweit in ein Plateau einmünden. Allerdings reift auch in diesen Kreisen die Einsicht, dass der PO bald erreicht sein wird. So hat in einem Interview Christophe de Margerie, der CEO des französischen Konzerns Total, kürzlich die Ansicht geäussert, dass die weltweite Erdölproduktion bald ihr Maximum erreichen wird und die Nachfrage nicht mehr gedeckt werden kann. Er äussert sich auch über die Chefs der anderen Ölgesellschaften, indem er sagt: «Wir denken alle dasselbe, es ist nur eine Frage, ob man es auch zu sagen wagt.»¹
Thema endlich zur Kenntnis nehmen
Zwar hat zum Beispiel Colin Campbell immer wieder von sich reden gemacht, etwa mit der Gründung der ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), und die NZZ hat ihm im «Folio» 9/04 einen Beitrag gewidmet. Andere, wie die ASPO Schweiz,² versuchen, ebenfalls zu informieren. Und doch ist es erstaunlich, wie die allermeisten Zeitgenossen dieses wohl schwerwiegendste und bedrohlichste Problem unserer Zeit immer wieder verdrängen. In der Öffentlichkeit werden zu Recht seit Jahren Umweltprobleme verschiedenster Art breit diskutiert. In vorderster Linie stehen dabei Sorgen über den Klimawandel. Viel zu reden gibt auch das wichtige Problem der Sicherheit der Versorgung mit elektrischer Energie. Obwohl wir in der Schweiz nahezu doppelt so viel Energie in Form von Erdöl konsumieren wie in Form von Elektrizität und dazu im Gegensatz zu Letzterer null Prozent im eigenen Land erzeugen, kümmert man sich bis heute kaum um die Frage, was geschehen wird, wenn die Einfuhr des flüssigen Energieträgers ins Stocken geraten oder wenn dessen Preis exorbitant steigen sollte.
Vermutlich liegt aber der Zeithorizont für die exponentiell zunehmende Verknappung des Erdöls näher als derjenige für den Versorgungsengpass mit Elektrizität. Man ist sich oft nicht bewusst, in welch ungeheurem Masse wir von der Versorgung mit Erdöl abhängig sind. Und dies nicht nur im Verkehr, in der Energieversorgung der Siedlungen und in grossen Bereichen der Rohstofferzeugung. Auch in der Nahrungsmittelerzeugung sind wir vollständig vom Erdöl abhängig. Ohne einen massiven Einsatz von Erdöl wäre die Ernährung von nun bald 7 Milliarden Menschen ausgeschlossen.
In der Schweiz wie auch in den anderen westlichen Industrieländern erzeugen nur ganz wenige Prozente der Bevölkerung die Nahrungsmittel für diejenigen, die nicht im Agrarsektor tätig sind. Dazu verbrauchen wir pro Kopf und Tag etwa 4 Kilogramm Erdöl. Fehlte diese Energiequelle, so träten grosse Hungersnöte auf, und die Theorien von Malthus³ würden vermutlich bestätigt. Am WEF 2008 in Davos wurde darüber diskutiert, ob nun die Armut, das Wasser oder das Klima das schwerwiegendste Problem der näheren Zukunft darstelle, der PO wurde nicht in diese Liste aufgenommen. Auch im schweizerischen Sorgenbarometer blieb der «peak oil» bisher unbeachtet.
Lässt sich die Katastrophe vermeiden?
Die Frage ist, ob wir überhaupt noch Möglichkeiten haben, die ganz grosse Katastrophe zu verhindern. Gewiss werden Anstrengungen unternommen, die Energieaufwendungen in einigen Bereichen zu vermindern, aber alle Massnahmen zur Förderung sogenannt erneuerbarer Energien haben bis heute kaum zu einer Substitution von fossiler Energie geführt. Spektakuläre Aktionen wie zum Beispiel die geplante Erdumrundung mit einem Solarflugzeug werden auch von Politikern als Meilensteine in der Anwendung der Solarenergie gefeiert.
Im Grunde genommen führen uns aber diese Produkte technischer Innovation nur vor Augen, wie hoffnungslos unterlegen die Solarenergie gegenüber dem Erdöl ist. Weder wird jemals ein Containerschiff mit Sonnenenergie betrieben werden können, noch werden Passagierflugzeuge sich mit dieser Energiequelle in die Luft erheben. Grosse Skepsis ist auch gegenüber anderen Versprechungen angebracht. So ist nach einer anfänglichen Euphorie rasch klar geworden, dass Biofuels kein Ausweg aus der Energiekrise sein können. Kann uns die Kernenergie retten? Kernspaltung, auf der heute alle kommerziellen Anlagen zur Gewinnung von Kernenergie beruhen, liefert bereits einen signifikanten Anteil am gesamten Energieaufkommen. Ohne auf die Problematik der Kernenergie näher einzugehen, kann aber gesagt werden, dass sie im Elektrizitätssektor sicherlich weiter eingesetzt werden wird. Ausser der Möglichkeit, die Abwärme für Heizzwecke zu nutzen, kann aber weder im Verkehrswesen noch in der Landwirtschaft und auch in vielen anderen Bereichen die Kernenergie nicht als Substituent für das Erdöl dienen. Die Kernfusion, die Energiequelle der Sonne, ist heute noch weit von einer kontrollierten Anwendung entfernt.
Von einem übergeordneten Standpunkte aus kann man die Entwicklung, die die menschliche Gesellschaft gegenwärtig durchläuft, als einen evolutionären Prozess betrachten. Die Menschheit hat in den vergangenen 150 Jahren dank der Erschliessung der fossilen Energiequellen eine spektakuläre Entwicklung durchgemacht, die nun vermutlich bald zu einem Endpunkt gelangen wird. Es wird dann wieder ein Evolutionsschub anstehen, wobei das Darwinsche Prinzip des «survival of the fittest» zum Zuge kommen wird. Mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit wird zu Ende dieses Jahrhunderts von der menschlichen Zivilisation, wie wir sie kennen, nicht mehr viel übrig bleiben. Die nächste grosse Krise wird sich von vorherigen, wie zum Beispiel dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, grundlegend dadurch unterscheiden, dass keine billige Energie zu ihrer Überwindung zur Verfügung stehen wird. Die Art und Weise, wie die Menschheit auf den PO reagieren wird, wird entscheidend sein.
¹ The Economist, January 12th 2008. ² http://www.peakoil.ch/index.html ³ Thomas Robert Malthus (1736–1834), britischer Ökonom und Sozialphilosoph.* Alex von Zelewsky ist emeritierter Professor für Chemie der Universität Freiburg (Schweiz).
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
Vor gut einem halben Jahrhundert, im Jahr 1956, präsentierte ein amerikanischer Geophysiker, M. King Hubbert (1903–1989), erstmals die Hypothese des «peak oil» (PO), wonach jedes Ölfeld betreffend seine Fördermenge von seiner Erschliessung bis zur Erschöpfung eine sogenannte Glockenkurve durchläuft. Seine Prognose, dass der Peak für die kontinentalen Ölfelder der USA Anfang der siebziger Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts erreicht sein werde, wurde bestätigt. Seither sind die Erdölimporte der USA auf über 70 Prozent ihres Gesamtbedarfs gestiegen, während das Land noch Anfang der sechziger Jahre nahezu selbstversorgend war. Ähnliche Entwicklungen waren bis jetzt in allen Ölfeldern der Welt zu beobachten, und es gibt bis anhin keine Anzeichen dafür, dass Hubberts Annahmen nicht zutreffen würden.
Fördermaximum im nächsten Jahrzehnt
Die am leichtesten zugänglichen Ölvorkommen sind längst entdeckt und zu einem grossen Teil auch bereits ausgebeutet. Daraus ergibt sich eine Kurve für die weltweite Ölförderungsmenge, welche ebenfalls durch einen Maximalwert gekennzeichnet ist. Experten wie der sehr erfahrene und angesehene Erdölgeologe Colin Campbell setzen den Zeitpunkt des PO auf etwa 2011 an, bei einer Fördermenge von weniger als 100 Millionen Barrel pro Tag (heute etwa 87 Millionen). Natürlich sind solche Angaben mit einer gewissen Unsicherheit behaftet, es besteht aber unter unabhängigen Fachleuten kaum mehr ein Zweifel darüber, dass der PO im nächsten Jahrzehnt eintreten wird.
Nur gewisse Interessenvertreter beharren auf der Behauptung, die Erdölproduktion werde weltweit in ein Plateau einmünden. Allerdings reift auch in diesen Kreisen die Einsicht, dass der PO bald erreicht sein wird. So hat in einem Interview Christophe de Margerie, der CEO des französischen Konzerns Total, kürzlich die Ansicht geäussert, dass die weltweite Erdölproduktion bald ihr Maximum erreichen wird und die Nachfrage nicht mehr gedeckt werden kann. Er äussert sich auch über die Chefs der anderen Ölgesellschaften, indem er sagt: «Wir denken alle dasselbe, es ist nur eine Frage, ob man es auch zu sagen wagt.»¹
Thema endlich zur Kenntnis nehmen
Zwar hat zum Beispiel Colin Campbell immer wieder von sich reden gemacht, etwa mit der Gründung der ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), und die NZZ hat ihm im «Folio» 9/04 einen Beitrag gewidmet. Andere, wie die ASPO Schweiz,² versuchen, ebenfalls zu informieren. Und doch ist es erstaunlich, wie die allermeisten Zeitgenossen dieses wohl schwerwiegendste und bedrohlichste Problem unserer Zeit immer wieder verdrängen. In der Öffentlichkeit werden zu Recht seit Jahren Umweltprobleme verschiedenster Art breit diskutiert. In vorderster Linie stehen dabei Sorgen über den Klimawandel. Viel zu reden gibt auch das wichtige Problem der Sicherheit der Versorgung mit elektrischer Energie. Obwohl wir in der Schweiz nahezu doppelt so viel Energie in Form von Erdöl konsumieren wie in Form von Elektrizität und dazu im Gegensatz zu Letzterer null Prozent im eigenen Land erzeugen, kümmert man sich bis heute kaum um die Frage, was geschehen wird, wenn die Einfuhr des flüssigen Energieträgers ins Stocken geraten oder wenn dessen Preis exorbitant steigen sollte.
Vermutlich liegt aber der Zeithorizont für die exponentiell zunehmende Verknappung des Erdöls näher als derjenige für den Versorgungsengpass mit Elektrizität. Man ist sich oft nicht bewusst, in welch ungeheurem Masse wir von der Versorgung mit Erdöl abhängig sind. Und dies nicht nur im Verkehr, in der Energieversorgung der Siedlungen und in grossen Bereichen der Rohstofferzeugung. Auch in der Nahrungsmittelerzeugung sind wir vollständig vom Erdöl abhängig. Ohne einen massiven Einsatz von Erdöl wäre die Ernährung von nun bald 7 Milliarden Menschen ausgeschlossen.
In der Schweiz wie auch in den anderen westlichen Industrieländern erzeugen nur ganz wenige Prozente der Bevölkerung die Nahrungsmittel für diejenigen, die nicht im Agrarsektor tätig sind. Dazu verbrauchen wir pro Kopf und Tag etwa 4 Kilogramm Erdöl. Fehlte diese Energiequelle, so träten grosse Hungersnöte auf, und die Theorien von Malthus³ würden vermutlich bestätigt. Am WEF 2008 in Davos wurde darüber diskutiert, ob nun die Armut, das Wasser oder das Klima das schwerwiegendste Problem der näheren Zukunft darstelle, der PO wurde nicht in diese Liste aufgenommen. Auch im schweizerischen Sorgenbarometer blieb der «peak oil» bisher unbeachtet.
Lässt sich die Katastrophe vermeiden?
Die Frage ist, ob wir überhaupt noch Möglichkeiten haben, die ganz grosse Katastrophe zu verhindern. Gewiss werden Anstrengungen unternommen, die Energieaufwendungen in einigen Bereichen zu vermindern, aber alle Massnahmen zur Förderung sogenannt erneuerbarer Energien haben bis heute kaum zu einer Substitution von fossiler Energie geführt. Spektakuläre Aktionen wie zum Beispiel die geplante Erdumrundung mit einem Solarflugzeug werden auch von Politikern als Meilensteine in der Anwendung der Solarenergie gefeiert.
Im Grunde genommen führen uns aber diese Produkte technischer Innovation nur vor Augen, wie hoffnungslos unterlegen die Solarenergie gegenüber dem Erdöl ist. Weder wird jemals ein Containerschiff mit Sonnenenergie betrieben werden können, noch werden Passagierflugzeuge sich mit dieser Energiequelle in die Luft erheben. Grosse Skepsis ist auch gegenüber anderen Versprechungen angebracht. So ist nach einer anfänglichen Euphorie rasch klar geworden, dass Biofuels kein Ausweg aus der Energiekrise sein können. Kann uns die Kernenergie retten? Kernspaltung, auf der heute alle kommerziellen Anlagen zur Gewinnung von Kernenergie beruhen, liefert bereits einen signifikanten Anteil am gesamten Energieaufkommen. Ohne auf die Problematik der Kernenergie näher einzugehen, kann aber gesagt werden, dass sie im Elektrizitätssektor sicherlich weiter eingesetzt werden wird. Ausser der Möglichkeit, die Abwärme für Heizzwecke zu nutzen, kann aber weder im Verkehrswesen noch in der Landwirtschaft und auch in vielen anderen Bereichen die Kernenergie nicht als Substituent für das Erdöl dienen. Die Kernfusion, die Energiequelle der Sonne, ist heute noch weit von einer kontrollierten Anwendung entfernt.
Von einem übergeordneten Standpunkte aus kann man die Entwicklung, die die menschliche Gesellschaft gegenwärtig durchläuft, als einen evolutionären Prozess betrachten. Die Menschheit hat in den vergangenen 150 Jahren dank der Erschliessung der fossilen Energiequellen eine spektakuläre Entwicklung durchgemacht, die nun vermutlich bald zu einem Endpunkt gelangen wird. Es wird dann wieder ein Evolutionsschub anstehen, wobei das Darwinsche Prinzip des «survival of the fittest» zum Zuge kommen wird. Mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit wird zu Ende dieses Jahrhunderts von der menschlichen Zivilisation, wie wir sie kennen, nicht mehr viel übrig bleiben. Die nächste grosse Krise wird sich von vorherigen, wie zum Beispiel dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, grundlegend dadurch unterscheiden, dass keine billige Energie zu ihrer Überwindung zur Verfügung stehen wird. Die Art und Weise, wie die Menschheit auf den PO reagieren wird, wird entscheidend sein.
¹ The Economist, January 12th 2008. ² http://www.peakoil.ch/index.html ³ Thomas Robert Malthus (1736–1834), britischer Ökonom und Sozialphilosoph.* Alex von Zelewsky ist emeritierter Professor für Chemie der Universität Freiburg (Schweiz).
Sonntag, August 03, 2008
Asia Times: Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
Asia Times
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Asia Times
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.
The new pricing principle lays out that starting from next year, Russia has agreed to pay to Turkmenistan a base gas purchasing price that is a mix of the average wholesale price in Europe and Ukraine. In effect, as compared to the current price of US$140 per thousand cubic meters of Turkmen gas, from 2009 onward Russia will be paying $225-295 under the new formula. This works out to an additional annual payment of something like $9.4 billion to $12.4 billion. But the transition to market principles of pricing will take place within the framework of a long-term contract running up to the year 2028.
The second agreement stipulates that Gazprom will finance and build gas transportation facilities and develop gas fields in Turkmenistan. Experts have estimated that Gazprom will finance Turkmen projects costing $4-6 billion. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said, "We have reached agreement regarding Gazprom financing and building the new main gas pipelines from the east of the country, developing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the Turkmen sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters." Interestingly, Gazprom will provide financing in the form of 0% credits for these local projects. The net gain for Turkmenistan is estimated to be in the region of $240-480 million.
From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan.
Curiously, the agreements reached in Ashgabat on Friday are unlikely to enable Gazprom to make revenue from reselling Turkmen gas. Quite possibly, Gazprom may now have to concede similar terms to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two other major gas producing countries in Central Asia. In other words, plain money-making was not the motivation for Gazprom. The Kremlin has a grand strategy.
Coincidence or not, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin traveled to Beijing at the weekend to launch with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Oishan, an energy initiative - a so-called "energy negotiation mechanism". The first round of negotiations within this framework took place on Saturday in Beijing. There has been an inexplicable media blackout of the event, but Beijing finally decided to break the news. The government-owned China Daily admitted on Monday, "Both China and Russia kept silent on the details of the consensus they reached on energy cooperation in the first round of their negotiation in Beijing on the weekend."
Without getting into details, China Daily merely took note of the talks as "a good beginning" and commented, "It seems that a shift of Russia's energy export policy is under way. Russia might turn its eyes from the Western countries to the Asia-Pacific region ... The cooperation in the energy sector is an issue of great significance for Sino-Russian relations ... the political and geographic closeness of the two countries would put their energy cooperation under a safe umbrella and make it a win-win deal. China-Russia ties are at their best times ... The two sides settled their lingering border disputes, held joint military exercises, and enjoyed rapidly increasing bilateral trade."
It is unclear whether Gazprom's agreements in Ashgabat and Sechin's talks in Beijing were inter-related. Conceivably, they overlapped in so far as China had signed a long-term agreement with Turkmenistan whereby the latter would supply 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China annually for the 30-year period starting from 2009. The construction work on the gas pipeline leading from Turkmenistan to China's Xinjiang Autonomous region has already begun. China had agreed on the price for Turkmen gas at $195 per thousand cubic meters. Now, the agreement in Ashgabat on Friday puts Gazprom in the driving seat for handling all of Turkmenistan's gas exports, including to China.
Russia and China have a heavy agenda to discuss in energy cooperation far beyond the price of Turkmen gas supplies. But suffice it to say that Gazprom's new stature as the sole buyer of Turkmen gas strengthens Russia's hands in setting the price in the world gas (and oil) market. And that has implications for China. Moscow would be keen to ensure that Russian and Chinese interests are harmonized in Central Asia.
Besides, Russia is taking a renewed interest in the idea of a "gas cartel". Medvedev referred to the idea during the visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Moscow last week. The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on Friday that "Moscow finds the idea of coordination of gas production and pricing policy with other gas exporters to be too tempting to abandon". The daily quoted Miller as saying, "This forum of gas exporters will set up the global gas balance. It will give answers to the questions concerning when, where and how much gas should be produced."
Until fairly recently Moscow was sensitive about the European Union's opposition to the idea of a gas cartel. (Washington has openly warned that it would legislate against countries that lined up behind a gas cartel). But high gas prices have weakened the European Union's negotiating position.
The agreements with Turkmenistan further consolidate Russia's control of Central Asia's gas exports. Gazprom recently offered to buy all of Azerbaijan's gas at European prices. (Medvedev visited Baku on July 3-4.) Baku will study with keen interest the agreements signed in Ashgabat on Friday. The overall implications of these Russian moves are very serious for the US and EU campaign to get the Nabucco gas pipeline project going.
Nabucco, which would run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary, was hoping to tap Turkmen gas by linking Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via a pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would be connected to the pipeline networks through the Caucasus to Turkey already existing, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
But with access denied to Turkmen gas, Nabucco's viability becomes doubtful. And, without Nabucco, the entire US strategy of reducing Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies makes no sense. Therefore, Washington is faced with Hobson's choice. Friday's agreements in Ashgabat mean that Nabucco's realization will now critically depend on gas supplies from the Middle East - Iran, in particular. Turkey is pursuing the idea of Iran supplying gas to Europe and has offered to mediate in the US-Iran standoff.
The geopolitics of energy makes strange bedfellows. Russia will be watching with anxiety the Turkish-Iranian-US tango. An understanding with Iran on gas pricing, production and market-sharing is vital for the success of Russia's overall gas export strategy. But Tehran visualizes the Nabucco as its passport for integration with Europe. Again, Russia's control of Turkmen gas cannot be to Tehran's liking. Tehran had keenly pursed with Ashgabat the idea of evacuation of Turkmen gas to the world market via Iranian territory.
There must be deep frustration in Washington. In sum, Russia has greatly strengthened its standing as the principal gas supplier to Europe. It not only controls Central Asia's gas exports but has ensured that gas from the region passes across Russia and not through the alternative trans-Caspian pipelines mooted by the US and EU. Also, a defining moment has come. The era of cheap gas is ending. Other gas exporters will cite the precedent of the price for Turkmen gas. European companies cannot match Gazprom's muscle. Azerbaijan becomes a test case. Equally, Russia places itself in a commanding position to influence the price of gas in the world market. A gas cartel is surely in the making. The geopolitical implications are simply profound for the US.
Moreover, Russian oil and gas companies are now spreading their wings into Latin America, which has been the US's traditional backyard. During Chavez's visit to Moscow on July 22, three Russian energy companies - Gazprom, LUKoil and TNK-BP - signed agreements with the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company PDVSA. They will replace the American oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in Venezuela.
At the signing ceremony, Medvedev said, "We have not only approved these agreements but have also decided to supervise their implementation." Chavez responded, "I look forward to seeing all of you in Venezuela."
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Asia Times
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.
The new pricing principle lays out that starting from next year, Russia has agreed to pay to Turkmenistan a base gas purchasing price that is a mix of the average wholesale price in Europe and Ukraine. In effect, as compared to the current price of US$140 per thousand cubic meters of Turkmen gas, from 2009 onward Russia will be paying $225-295 under the new formula. This works out to an additional annual payment of something like $9.4 billion to $12.4 billion. But the transition to market principles of pricing will take place within the framework of a long-term contract running up to the year 2028.
The second agreement stipulates that Gazprom will finance and build gas transportation facilities and develop gas fields in Turkmenistan. Experts have estimated that Gazprom will finance Turkmen projects costing $4-6 billion. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said, "We have reached agreement regarding Gazprom financing and building the new main gas pipelines from the east of the country, developing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the Turkmen sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters." Interestingly, Gazprom will provide financing in the form of 0% credits for these local projects. The net gain for Turkmenistan is estimated to be in the region of $240-480 million.
From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan.
Curiously, the agreements reached in Ashgabat on Friday are unlikely to enable Gazprom to make revenue from reselling Turkmen gas. Quite possibly, Gazprom may now have to concede similar terms to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two other major gas producing countries in Central Asia. In other words, plain money-making was not the motivation for Gazprom. The Kremlin has a grand strategy.
Coincidence or not, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin traveled to Beijing at the weekend to launch with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Oishan, an energy initiative - a so-called "energy negotiation mechanism". The first round of negotiations within this framework took place on Saturday in Beijing. There has been an inexplicable media blackout of the event, but Beijing finally decided to break the news. The government-owned China Daily admitted on Monday, "Both China and Russia kept silent on the details of the consensus they reached on energy cooperation in the first round of their negotiation in Beijing on the weekend."
Without getting into details, China Daily merely took note of the talks as "a good beginning" and commented, "It seems that a shift of Russia's energy export policy is under way. Russia might turn its eyes from the Western countries to the Asia-Pacific region ... The cooperation in the energy sector is an issue of great significance for Sino-Russian relations ... the political and geographic closeness of the two countries would put their energy cooperation under a safe umbrella and make it a win-win deal. China-Russia ties are at their best times ... The two sides settled their lingering border disputes, held joint military exercises, and enjoyed rapidly increasing bilateral trade."
It is unclear whether Gazprom's agreements in Ashgabat and Sechin's talks in Beijing were inter-related. Conceivably, they overlapped in so far as China had signed a long-term agreement with Turkmenistan whereby the latter would supply 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China annually for the 30-year period starting from 2009. The construction work on the gas pipeline leading from Turkmenistan to China's Xinjiang Autonomous region has already begun. China had agreed on the price for Turkmen gas at $195 per thousand cubic meters. Now, the agreement in Ashgabat on Friday puts Gazprom in the driving seat for handling all of Turkmenistan's gas exports, including to China.
Russia and China have a heavy agenda to discuss in energy cooperation far beyond the price of Turkmen gas supplies. But suffice it to say that Gazprom's new stature as the sole buyer of Turkmen gas strengthens Russia's hands in setting the price in the world gas (and oil) market. And that has implications for China. Moscow would be keen to ensure that Russian and Chinese interests are harmonized in Central Asia.
Besides, Russia is taking a renewed interest in the idea of a "gas cartel". Medvedev referred to the idea during the visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Moscow last week. The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on Friday that "Moscow finds the idea of coordination of gas production and pricing policy with other gas exporters to be too tempting to abandon". The daily quoted Miller as saying, "This forum of gas exporters will set up the global gas balance. It will give answers to the questions concerning when, where and how much gas should be produced."
Until fairly recently Moscow was sensitive about the European Union's opposition to the idea of a gas cartel. (Washington has openly warned that it would legislate against countries that lined up behind a gas cartel). But high gas prices have weakened the European Union's negotiating position.
The agreements with Turkmenistan further consolidate Russia's control of Central Asia's gas exports. Gazprom recently offered to buy all of Azerbaijan's gas at European prices. (Medvedev visited Baku on July 3-4.) Baku will study with keen interest the agreements signed in Ashgabat on Friday. The overall implications of these Russian moves are very serious for the US and EU campaign to get the Nabucco gas pipeline project going.
Nabucco, which would run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary, was hoping to tap Turkmen gas by linking Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via a pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would be connected to the pipeline networks through the Caucasus to Turkey already existing, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
But with access denied to Turkmen gas, Nabucco's viability becomes doubtful. And, without Nabucco, the entire US strategy of reducing Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies makes no sense. Therefore, Washington is faced with Hobson's choice. Friday's agreements in Ashgabat mean that Nabucco's realization will now critically depend on gas supplies from the Middle East - Iran, in particular. Turkey is pursuing the idea of Iran supplying gas to Europe and has offered to mediate in the US-Iran standoff.
The geopolitics of energy makes strange bedfellows. Russia will be watching with anxiety the Turkish-Iranian-US tango. An understanding with Iran on gas pricing, production and market-sharing is vital for the success of Russia's overall gas export strategy. But Tehran visualizes the Nabucco as its passport for integration with Europe. Again, Russia's control of Turkmen gas cannot be to Tehran's liking. Tehran had keenly pursed with Ashgabat the idea of evacuation of Turkmen gas to the world market via Iranian territory.
There must be deep frustration in Washington. In sum, Russia has greatly strengthened its standing as the principal gas supplier to Europe. It not only controls Central Asia's gas exports but has ensured that gas from the region passes across Russia and not through the alternative trans-Caspian pipelines mooted by the US and EU. Also, a defining moment has come. The era of cheap gas is ending. Other gas exporters will cite the precedent of the price for Turkmen gas. European companies cannot match Gazprom's muscle. Azerbaijan becomes a test case. Equally, Russia places itself in a commanding position to influence the price of gas in the world market. A gas cartel is surely in the making. The geopolitical implications are simply profound for the US.
Moreover, Russian oil and gas companies are now spreading their wings into Latin America, which has been the US's traditional backyard. During Chavez's visit to Moscow on July 22, three Russian energy companies - Gazprom, LUKoil and TNK-BP - signed agreements with the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company PDVSA. They will replace the American oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in Venezuela.
At the signing ceremony, Medvedev said, "We have not only approved these agreements but have also decided to supervise their implementation." Chavez responded, "I look forward to seeing all of you in Venezuela."
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
Samstag, August 02, 2008
NYT: Effect off rising transportation costs on Globalisation
Zeichnet sich da bereits ein Trend ab? Wir sollten unsere landwirtschaftliche und industrielle Basis doch nicht so einfach sterben lassen....
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
“It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.”
The world economy has become so integrated that shoppers find relatively few T-shirts and sneakers in Wal-Mart and Target carrying a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But globalization may be losing some of the inexorable economic power it had for much of the past quarter-century, even as it faces fresh challenges as a political ideology.
Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.
“If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”
“That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”
Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago.
To avoid having to ship all its products from abroad, the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea opened its first factory in the United States in May. Some electronics companies that left Mexico in recent years for the lower wages in China are now returning to Mexico, because they can lower costs by trucking their output overland to American consumers.
Neighborhood Effect
Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago.
“If prices stay at these levels, that could lead to some significant rearrangement of production, among sectors and countries,” said C. Fred Bergsten, author of “The United States and the World Economy” and director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington. “You could have a very significant shock to traditional consumption patterns and also some important growth effects.”
The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.
The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”
The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India.
But if the international community fulfills its pledge to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, even China and India would have to reduce the growth of their emissions, and the relative costs of production in countries that use energy inefficiently could grow.
The political landscape may also be changing. Dissatisfaction with globalization has led to the election of governments in Latin America hostile to the process. A somewhat similar reaction can be seen in the United States, where both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton promised during the Democratic primary season to “re-evaluate” the nation’s existing free trade agreements.
Last week, efforts to complete what is known as the Doha round of trade talks collapsed in acrimony, dealing a serious blow to tariff reduction. The negotiations, begun in 2001, failed after China and India battled the United States over agricultural tariffs, with the two developing countries insisting on broad rights to protect themselves against surges of food imports that could hurt their farmers.
Some critics of globalization are encouraged by those developments, which they see as a welcome check on the process. On environmentalist blogs, some are even gleefully promoting a “globalization death watch.”
Many leading economists say such predictions are probably overblown. “It would be a mistake, a misinterpretation, to think that a huge rollback or reversal of fundamental trends is under way,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Distance and trade costs do matter, but we are still in a globalized era.”
As economists and business executives well know, shipping costs are only one factor in determining the flow of international trade. When companies decide where to invest in a new factory or from whom to buy a product, they also take into account exchange rates, consumer confidence, labor costs, government regulations and the availability of skilled managers.
‘People Were Profligate’
What may be coming to an end are price-driven oddities like chicken and fish crossing the ocean from the Western Hemisphere to be filleted and packaged in Asia not to be consumed there, but to be shipped back across the Pacific again. “Because of low costs, people were profligate,” said Nayan Chanda, author of “Bound Together,” a history of globalization.
The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected.
Plants in industries that require relatively less investment in infrastructure, like furniture, footwear and toys, are already showing signs of mobility as shipping costs rise.
Until recently, standard practice in the furniture industry was to ship American timber from ports like Norfolk, Baltimore and Charleston to China, where oak and cherry would be milled into sofas, beds, tables, cabinets and chairs, which were then shipped back to the United States.
But with transport costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States.
Among them is Craftmaster Furniture, a company founded in North Carolina but now Chinese-owned. And at an industry fair in April, La-Z-Boy announced a new line that will begin production in North Carolina this month.
“There’s just a handful of us left, but it has become easier for us domestic folks to compete,” said Steven Kincaid of Kincaid Furniture in Hudson, N.C., a division of La-Z-Boy.
Avocado Salad in January
Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities.
“This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.”
Global companies like General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa and Procter & Gamble are beginning to respond to the simultaneous increases in shipping and environmental costs with green policies meant to reduce both fuel consumption and carbon emissions. That pressure is likely to increase as both manufacturers and retailers seek ways to tighten the global supply chain.
“Being green is in their best interests not so much in making money as saving money,” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “Green companies are likely to be a permanent trend, as these vulnerabilities continue, but it’s going to take a long time for all this to settle down.”
In addition, the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over. It is a highly profitable business strategy aimed at reducing warehousing and inventory costs by arranging for raw materials and other supplies to arrive only when needed, and not before.
Jeffrey E. Garten, the author of “World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy” and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, said that companies “cannot take a risk that the just-in-time system won’t function, because the whole global trading system is based on that notion.” As a result, he said, “they are going to have to have redundancies in the supply chain, like more warehousing and multiple sources of supply and even production.”
One likely outcome if transportation rates stay high, economists said, would be a strengthening of the neighborhood effect. Instead of seeking supplies wherever they can be bought most cheaply, regardless of location, and outsourcing the assembly of products all over the world, manufacturers would instead concentrate on performing those activities as close to home as possible.
In a more regionalized trading world, economists say, China would probably end up buying more of the iron ore it needs from Australia and less from Brazil, and farming out an even greater proportion of its manufacturing work to places like Vietnam and Thailand. Similarly, Mexico’s maquiladora sector, the assembly plants concentrated near its border with the United States, would become more attractive to manufacturers with an eye on the American market.
But a trend toward regionalization would not necessarily benefit the United States, economists caution. Not only has it lost some of its manufacturing base and skills over the past quarter-century, and experienced a decline in consumer confidence as part of the current slowdown, but it is also far from the economies that have become the most dynamic in the world, those of Asia.
“Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.”
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
“It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.”
The world economy has become so integrated that shoppers find relatively few T-shirts and sneakers in Wal-Mart and Target carrying a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But globalization may be losing some of the inexorable economic power it had for much of the past quarter-century, even as it faces fresh challenges as a political ideology.
Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.
“If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”
“That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”
Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago.
To avoid having to ship all its products from abroad, the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea opened its first factory in the United States in May. Some electronics companies that left Mexico in recent years for the lower wages in China are now returning to Mexico, because they can lower costs by trucking their output overland to American consumers.
Neighborhood Effect
Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago.
“If prices stay at these levels, that could lead to some significant rearrangement of production, among sectors and countries,” said C. Fred Bergsten, author of “The United States and the World Economy” and director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington. “You could have a very significant shock to traditional consumption patterns and also some important growth effects.”
The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.
The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”
The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India.
But if the international community fulfills its pledge to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, even China and India would have to reduce the growth of their emissions, and the relative costs of production in countries that use energy inefficiently could grow.
The political landscape may also be changing. Dissatisfaction with globalization has led to the election of governments in Latin America hostile to the process. A somewhat similar reaction can be seen in the United States, where both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton promised during the Democratic primary season to “re-evaluate” the nation’s existing free trade agreements.
Last week, efforts to complete what is known as the Doha round of trade talks collapsed in acrimony, dealing a serious blow to tariff reduction. The negotiations, begun in 2001, failed after China and India battled the United States over agricultural tariffs, with the two developing countries insisting on broad rights to protect themselves against surges of food imports that could hurt their farmers.
Some critics of globalization are encouraged by those developments, which they see as a welcome check on the process. On environmentalist blogs, some are even gleefully promoting a “globalization death watch.”
Many leading economists say such predictions are probably overblown. “It would be a mistake, a misinterpretation, to think that a huge rollback or reversal of fundamental trends is under way,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Distance and trade costs do matter, but we are still in a globalized era.”
As economists and business executives well know, shipping costs are only one factor in determining the flow of international trade. When companies decide where to invest in a new factory or from whom to buy a product, they also take into account exchange rates, consumer confidence, labor costs, government regulations and the availability of skilled managers.
‘People Were Profligate’
What may be coming to an end are price-driven oddities like chicken and fish crossing the ocean from the Western Hemisphere to be filleted and packaged in Asia not to be consumed there, but to be shipped back across the Pacific again. “Because of low costs, people were profligate,” said Nayan Chanda, author of “Bound Together,” a history of globalization.
The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected.
Plants in industries that require relatively less investment in infrastructure, like furniture, footwear and toys, are already showing signs of mobility as shipping costs rise.
Until recently, standard practice in the furniture industry was to ship American timber from ports like Norfolk, Baltimore and Charleston to China, where oak and cherry would be milled into sofas, beds, tables, cabinets and chairs, which were then shipped back to the United States.
But with transport costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States.
Among them is Craftmaster Furniture, a company founded in North Carolina but now Chinese-owned. And at an industry fair in April, La-Z-Boy announced a new line that will begin production in North Carolina this month.
“There’s just a handful of us left, but it has become easier for us domestic folks to compete,” said Steven Kincaid of Kincaid Furniture in Hudson, N.C., a division of La-Z-Boy.
Avocado Salad in January
Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities.
“This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.”
Global companies like General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa and Procter & Gamble are beginning to respond to the simultaneous increases in shipping and environmental costs with green policies meant to reduce both fuel consumption and carbon emissions. That pressure is likely to increase as both manufacturers and retailers seek ways to tighten the global supply chain.
“Being green is in their best interests not so much in making money as saving money,” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “Green companies are likely to be a permanent trend, as these vulnerabilities continue, but it’s going to take a long time for all this to settle down.”
In addition, the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over. It is a highly profitable business strategy aimed at reducing warehousing and inventory costs by arranging for raw materials and other supplies to arrive only when needed, and not before.
Jeffrey E. Garten, the author of “World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy” and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, said that companies “cannot take a risk that the just-in-time system won’t function, because the whole global trading system is based on that notion.” As a result, he said, “they are going to have to have redundancies in the supply chain, like more warehousing and multiple sources of supply and even production.”
One likely outcome if transportation rates stay high, economists said, would be a strengthening of the neighborhood effect. Instead of seeking supplies wherever they can be bought most cheaply, regardless of location, and outsourcing the assembly of products all over the world, manufacturers would instead concentrate on performing those activities as close to home as possible.
In a more regionalized trading world, economists say, China would probably end up buying more of the iron ore it needs from Australia and less from Brazil, and farming out an even greater proportion of its manufacturing work to places like Vietnam and Thailand. Similarly, Mexico’s maquiladora sector, the assembly plants concentrated near its border with the United States, would become more attractive to manufacturers with an eye on the American market.
But a trend toward regionalization would not necessarily benefit the United States, economists caution. Not only has it lost some of its manufacturing base and skills over the past quarter-century, and experienced a decline in consumer confidence as part of the current slowdown, but it is also far from the economies that have become the most dynamic in the world, those of Asia.
“Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.”
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