Irina Slav on energy

3 days ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

Evidence that human stupidity is endless abounds these days. What’s impressive, however, is that just when you think we’ve reached peak stupid, someone sees it as a challenge and takes that challenge up. The latest: the Dubai chocolate craze that has caused a global pistachio shortage. Chocolate is a good thing. Chocolate with pistachio filling is also a good thing. Ditto kadayif, the Ottoman-era pastry soaked in sugar syrup that is to date a traditional dessert across the Middle East.

3 days ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

In that famous folk tale of animal abuse commonly known as “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, the animal abuser likes her chair, porridge, and bed just right because she’s a brat. Carbon-based life likes its planets the same way, if astrophysicists are to be believed. One part of the carbon-based life form known as humankind is particularly fond of things being just right, after being spoiled consistently for years, and that part is the transition crowd.

6 days ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

So Easter is “on time” this year - it’s usually either late or early. Happy Easter. Meanwhile in Bonkers Britain (I think we are pulling slightly ahead of Dumb Deutschland) for a mere £3 million we are getting: “A ground-breaking project to suck carbon out of the sea which has started operating on England’s south coast. The small pilot scheme, known as SeaCURE, is funded by the UK government as part of its search for technologies that fight climate change.

1 week ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

When kid Slav first informed me that Bulgaria produces natural gas I was a little bit shocked. Sure, I’d known that we do have some natural gas resources and that Chevron had tried doing some shale exploration that was cut short by a protest-prompted moratorium (which I don’t disagree with*) but local production? Yet we do have that, at the magnificent scale of 1 million cu m, presumably daily, this year. Going forward, however, this could change significantly, Guyana-Suriname style.

1 week ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

The EU has been trying to stop consuming Russian natural gas since 2022. It has tried banning it, on numerous occasions, it has significantly reduced the volumes it buys thanks to a fortunate and completely random bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, it has tried to pretend it wasn’t mad when the Ukraine said it won’t extend its transit deal, and now it is preparing to present its Plan To Get Rid of Russian Energy — while business executives call for a resumption of pipeline imports.