got gas?

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NEW!! January 18

Nope. We don’t.

After days of dry and empty pipeline, the Czech PM negotiated a deal between Russia and the Ukraine. The countries finally agreed to resume supplying gas to Europe.

But now they have technical problems that they refuse to solve: Russia says the Ukraine keeps withdrawing gas that needs to stay in the pipeline to maintain the necessary pressure.

The Czech Republic is now using up reserves and its intake of supplies of gas from Norway is working to its 100-percent capacity.

UPDATE JAN 15: Nothing new so far, as of Jan 15 it is still not flowing…

But people in the Balkans are freezing.

And its gets you thinking:

What happens next year? Are we gonna go though this all over again?

Is Russia telling us that “it is still here” and it is not to be messed up with?

Is Russia telling us that the EU should reconsider making friends with the Ukraine by inviting it into the EU and NATO? Russia does not want either.

Will people in Europe start hating Russia even more? Well, Czechs don’t like it anyway. What about Russian products and firms? Will Europeans reconsider these partnerships?

This is what the network in Europea looks like (via Aktualne.cz). I know this is probably a stupid remark, but can we reverse the direction and start purchasing gas from the U.K. and its North Sea resources?

UPDATE FRIDAY JANUARY 16: Slovakia made an agreement with the Czech Republic today on the reversing the the direction of gas flow in the main pipeline, so that Slovakia can pump gas in the eastbound direction, amounting to some 20 million cubic meters per day.

UPDATE SATURDAY JANUARY 17: As of Sunday Slovakia will indeed receive natural gas “from the Czech Republic”, i.e. the main pipeline will be reversed. Western Europe distributors and the main Czech distributor will pump 15 million cubic meters a day. The average Slovak daily consumption in winter time is 25 to 30 cubic meters. The governments of Russia and the Ukraine did not reach any deal so far (as of Saturday evening CET). However, the EU gas distributors suggest they would pay for the technical gas (the purpose of which is to pressurize the system) themselves…

Czechs steal enormous amounts of electricity

More than 3,000 cases of illegal electricity consumption were investigated and busted last year in the Czech Republic, the DENIK daily wrote. The electricity producer CEZ did the math and found out that the illegal consumption corresponds to that of a city of 10,000 people for the entire year.

Most usually people who do not want to pay their electricity bills just bypass the meter. Or, other people just break into a switchbox and connect their wires to other people’s meter, so these payers have higher bills.

Of course the CEZ company is not altogether innocent in this issue either. It has a special department that focuses on busting these illegal power takeoffs. The department employs tough brainless SWAT-esque individuals who have become known for absolutely insensitive behavior towards client, who are often “innocent”. Numerous lawsuits have been filed against these “investigators”.

The CEZ company argues it must be extremely tough on these felons, otherwise the losses would have to be paid by the honest bill-payers who have no debts.

That makes no sense: since so much electricity has already been “stolen” (corresponding to the consumption of a town of 10,000) and since the company generates huge profits, the losses affect the final annual numbers, hence the shareholders’ profits.

Any illegal power takeoff is an accident waiting to happen (short-circuit-related fires). No question about that. But the CEZ company is probably the least favorite business entity in the country because it has no competitor of any kind (in relation to average Czechs, of course, I am not talking about solar energy systems) and Czechs just have to use their services, no matter how client-unfriendly and crappy they are.