1st row: English (my voice). 2nd row: Arabic (all). EN transcripts below.
Transcript of 01.01.25 Sky News Interview
(Note: one clarification in Red below – T.O’D.)
Auto Generated
0:00 Well, thank you for having me and
0:04 happy New Year to everybody. well I
0:07 think we have to be clear first of all
0:11 what the energy crisis has been in
0:13 Europe since the War Began a year before
0:16 the escalation of the war the invasion
0:19 of Ukraine Mr Putin was already planning
0:22 an energy War he started cutting off gas
0:25 selectively to Europe a year before and
0:27 before the war even began he shut off
0:30 the huge North stream one pipeline
0:33 causing a crisis in Europe the gas
0:35 that’s still going across Ukraine now
0:37 this is quite interesting the ukrainians
0:39 even though they’re the victims of an
0:42 invasion they put that aside and were
0:44 willing to Transit some gas across their
0:47 country to supply their neighbors until
0:49 their neighbors could become in Eastern
0:51 Europe until they could become
0:53 independent of Russian gas everybody’s
0:56 had plenty of time to become independent
0:58 of Russian gas and almost countries had
1:01 plans it’s not a problem and uh so this
1:04 contract came to the end and I think we
1:06 have to respect the ukrainians that
1:08 saying they’ve done enough under War to
1:11 Transit Russian gas across their country
1:14 they have no further interest and
1:15 principle everybody knew about this it
1:17 was priced in and it should not cause a
1:20 big difficulty of course a couple
1:23 countries are are complaining especially
1:25 Slovakia, but that’s not a matter of
1:28 that country having any energy crisis
1:30 and a lack of gas it can get gas from
1:33 other sources however uh the government
1:36 was making about half a billion dollars
1:39 in profits transferring the gas across
1:41 the country in what we call Transit fees
1:44 and this is what they’re upset about but
1:46 if you look at the entire EU everyone
1:49 else sees that this is necessary and
1:51 there’s no reason to continue bringing
1:53 Russian gas in during a war
2:03 [Music]
2:20 yes well, the structure of the
2:23 European gas market has changed
2:25 dramatically since the War Began and
2:28 really this is a
2:30 you know Mr Putin likes to present
2:32 himself as a great Russian nationalist
2:35 well any Russian nationalist who’s lost
2:37 his country such a big business they
2:40 have the world’s first or second biggest
2:43 gas fields in Western Siberia and
2:46 they used to massively Supply Europe 40%
2:49 maybe
2:50 45% of Europe’s Imports came from Russia
2:54 and that was totally lost because of
2:55 this war Putin cut it off to try and
2:58 force the countries of Eastern Europe to
3:00 be in an energy crisis and to give up
3:02 support for Ukraine that didn’t work so
3:05 what has happened over this period of
3:07 time massive amount of American LNG
3:10 primarily came in to replace the Russian
3:13 gas 67% last year in this last year of
3:17 all the fracking gas of all the LNG that
3:21 the America exports has gone to Europe
3:24 and that has provided 47% of the total
[Clarification: of total LNG imports, in 2023, 37% in 2024}
3:27 Imports of Europe this is a huge change
3:30 and you know it’s a market Putin
3:31 basically gave to the Americans number
3:34 two there’s massive gas comes by
3:36 pipeline from Norway also some LG and
3:39 number three from Algeria other
3:41 countries such as Qatar are fairly far
3:43 down the list so Europe that should not
3:46 have a problem getting gas it’s going to
3:48 be expensive and that’s another story
3:51 Europe made some mistakes in this last
3:53 heating season or some mistakes in
3:55 policy becoming too dependent in my
3:58 opinion on windmills and now we’ve had
4:01 in November and early December in Europe
4:04 we had what the Germans called dun FL
4:07 which means it was dark uh so the solar
4:10 didn’t work and there was no wind and it
4:12 was cold and so massive amount of gas
4:14 was taken out of storage Europe had
4:17 extra gas and storage for the coming
4:19 year they’re in a very good situation
4:21 but because of what I see as the over
4:23 Reliance on Renewables they were forced
4:26 to take gas out of storage and run it
4:28 down they’ll have have enough gas for
4:30 this year but the worry is building it
4:32 up again for next year and so they’re
4:34 going to have to pay a higher price LG
4:37 that’s now going to Asia they’re going
4:39 to have to offer more money for it than
4:41 the Asians to divert it to fill their
4:43 storage over the next several months
4:46 but in in general there shouldn’t be a
4:48 crisis but this is causes
4:53 uncompetitively economic difficulties in
4:56 Europe
5:05 my pleasure my pleasure thank you
English (auto-generated)
Transcript of Sky News Interview 02.01.25
(NOTE: 3-4 minutes of English audio were Inaudible, so cut, and Arabic version is longer -T.O’D.)
0:00 well thank you for having me again
0:04 yes this is really one of the last
0:07 phases of the acute energy war that
0:10 Putin launched against Europe a year
0:13 before his uh invasion of Ukraine he had
0:17 prepared this energy war against Europe
0:20 Europe was very dependent on his gas 40
0:23 45% of the natural gas Europe was using
0:26 was coming from Russia and he used this
0:29 to try to mind the solidarity of the
0:31 European Union to try and cause a crisis
0:34 so they wouldn’t support Ukraine in the
0:36 war and that has failed so after he cut
0:39 off the gas through northstream and it
0:41 was replaced with gas mainly from
0:44 Norway and from the United States but
0:46 also from Algeria. Europe has enough
0:49 gas and they knew that this last gas
0:53 that crosses Ukraine was going to be cut
0:55 off that’s about 5% of the gas they use
0:58 in a year and that was going to be cut
1:00 off and they knew ahead of time and that
1:02 was priced in and so none of this should
1:05 be a problem for any country in Europe
1:07 they’ve had three years now and the
1:09 ukrainians you know gave them three
1:11
years the Eastern the countries in the
1:13
east of Europe gave them three years to
1:16
adapt to this now Slovakia was all ready
1:18
for this so is Hungary so is Austria
1:21
they’re particularly dependent on this
1:23
gas that was just recently
1:25
ended but Slovakia is complaining
1:28
they’ve had a change of government and
1:29
the new president Mr FICO is very Pro
1:33
Putin obviously and he’s complaining
1:35
loudly but the reality is Slovakia will
1:38
have plenty of gas from other sources of
1:41
course they’ll pay more for it but
1:43
everybody’s been paying more for gas in
1:45
Europe all of Europe is paying about
1:47
twice as much as before the war twice as
1:51
much since they’ve lost the Russian
1:58
gas well you know
2:01
that that depends on reading Mr Trump’s
2:04
mind so uh I’ll tell you what I
2:06
understand about this Trump has this
2:08
thing where he thinks there should not
2:11
be a misalignment in the balance of
2:13
payments with other countries he
2:15
threatens to put tariffs on everybody
2:17
who has a a a negative balance of
2:20
payments with the United States however
2:23
if you look at what the European Union
2:25
is doing
2:27
67% of all the gas that’s orted from the
2:30
United States this is a huge amount so
2:32
you know largest exporter in the world
2:34
of LG 67% of it is going to Europe and
2:39
it right now provides 47% well uh in
2:42
2023 it was almost 50% and this year is
2:45
about 40% of all the N of all the LG
2:49
that Europe Imports so it’s it’s
2:51
actually pretty hard to export more and
2:53
I think the American companies, just
2:56
like a buyer of gas wants a diversified
3:00
set of suppliers the American exporters
3:02
of gas would like to have a diversified
3:05
set of buyers and so I don’t think that
3:08
number can go much higher I it’s hard
3:10
for me to see where Mr Trump is going to
3:12
go with this this might be leverage for
3:15
some other political concessions he
3:17
wants say getting them to pay more for
3:19
NATO and that kind of
3:28
thing yeah no I I have to say although I
3:32
will say that the acute energy War
3:36
Europe has won it they didn’t have to
3:38
surrender to the blackmail of having the
3:40
gas cut off by Russia and give up
3:42
support for Ukraine so in that sense
3:45
they have enough gas and they won that
3:47
energy War but the energy crisis
3:49
continues in a sense the energy War
3:51
continues because as you said the
3:54
sources of gas they have now are more
3:56
expensive they’re paying about twice as
3:58
much for natural gas as they were before
4:00
the war now I have to say a lot of this
4:04
is a problem with European policies with
4:06
European energy policy and with the
4:09
European green deal in particular I see
4:12
it as as an own goal uh they on the one
4:15
hand they want what I would say is an
4:17
overdependence on renewable energy an
4:19
over dependence on wind and solar but
4:22
then we get periods like I’m here in
4:23
Berlin in Germany in November and early
4:26
December it was dark it and there was
4:29
very little wind and it’s very cold and
4:31
they used up their excess their extra
4:33
Surplus natural gas they had saved for
4:36
the year and now in January it’s going
4:37
to be very cold again so overly
4:40
depending on Renewables makes them more
4:43
dependent on natural gas it becomes more
4:46
critical when there’s no wind and when
4:48
there’s no sun they should not never
4:50
have closed the nuclear plants in
4:52
Germany and this is the discussion the
4:55
European Union has to sort out if they
4:57
want to be competitive they’re going to
4:59
have to do something more
5:01
reasonable in my
5:12
opinion thank you too I appreciate you
5:15
having me
English (auto-generated)
The Global Barrel 