Electric car makers put the brakes on UK production because they are too expensive to sell
“It is now expected that the UK will produce 280,000 fully electric cars and vans in 2025, down from previous estimates of 360,000.”
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 13, 2023
Sales of pure electric cars, BEVs, were 267,000 last year, so this new forecast suggests flatlining.
I am not surprised in the least. A large proportion of EV sales are for company cars, due to the various tax advantages bestowed. Most private buyers however appear to be numpties who think they are saving the planet.
EVs offer nothing to the vast majority of the driving public, and it is hard to see any real breakthrough arriving anytime soon.
By coincidence, I was chatting with a BMW Sales Manager this week, who had just been turfed out of his X6 and given the IX electric model (which he says is crap!). The reason was that BMW had been pre-registering a lot of EVs before the end of the year, in order to meet government targets.
He says BMW were under government pressure to do so, though what that pressure is I cannot tell.
And all of this highlights the immense problems facing our car industry as the 2030 deadline nears. They are being forced to invest billions in setting up new assembly lines and engine plants to cater for the new models, whilst at the same time running down conventional car operations. On top of that, they may find that they cannot sell all of the EVs they are producing; or alternatively if they cut back on EV output, they risk losing market share.
Almost all Hungarians oppose sanctions on Russia – survey
RT | January 14, 2023
The overwhelming majority of Hungarians are opposed to sanctions the West has imposed on Russia over Ukraine and believe that they are detrimental to the economy, the nation’s government said on Saturday, citing the results of a countrywide questionnaire, or “consultation.”
In a Facebook post, the Hungarian government revealed that “97% of Hungarians reject sanctions that cause serious damage,“ adding that “The message is clear: the Brussels sanctions policy must be reviewed.”
Szentkiralyi Alexandra, a government spokeswoman, said that the restrictions the EU had imposed on Russia over Ukraine had failed to stop the conflict, but caused a lot of economic issues for Europe. In this vein, Hungarians tend to reject oil restrictions and planned gas sanctions, she noted.
“The people taking part in the consultation say a clear ‘no’ to sanctions that further increase food prices or place additional burdens on European tourism,” Szentkiralyi added.
The spokeswoman pointed out that Hungary is the first EU country to poll its citizens about the sanctions’ impact. She also described the consultation as “a guideline for Hungarian public actors,” with the results set to be delivered to EU authorities in Brussels. “This is quite necessary because they want to introduce new sanctions instead of revising the sanctions policy,” Szentkiralyi explained.
She went on to thank about 1.4 million people that took part in the survey, noting that detailed results would be released in the near future. The consultation on the matter was launched in mid-October and included seven questions about sanctions on the oil, gas, raw materials export, and nuclear and tourism spheres.
In recent months, the sanctions the West imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict have exacerbated Europe’s energy crisis, causing fuel prices and costs of living to surge.
Hungary, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, has long been critical of EU sanctions policy. On Friday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that by promoting sanctions in the bloc, German politicians had “miscalculated,” but do not have the courage to admit that.
Last month, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the sanctions were taking a heavy toll on the European economy. He also claimed the US was the only nation benefiting from them, since it has been selling liquified natural gas to Europe at lucrative prices.
Top LNG Producer Qatar Predicts Return of Russian Gas to European Market Within Five Years
Samizdat – 14.01.2023
Gas prices began creeping up in 2021 amid underinvestment in production and fierce competition for limited supplies between European and Asian markets. The supply crunch was exacerbated in 2022, as European countries began rejecting gas from Russia – which accounts for 15 percent of global natural gas output – over the security crisis in Ukraine.
Global instability in natural gas prices and availability won’t be going anywhere in the near term, and Russia will inevitably resume supplying Europe to restore a sense of equilibrium to energy markets, Qatar’s energy minister has indicated.
“It’s going to be a volatile situation for some time to come. We’re bringing a lot of gas to the market, but it’s not enough,” Qatari Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said, speaking at an energy forum on Saturday.
Al-Kaabi explained that global energy supply troubles actually started some time before the Ukraine crisis, “where the lack of investment in the oil and gas sector caused really a shortage in gas. And ahead of the Ukraine crisis, the oil and gas prices obviously were clearly going higher due to lack of supply. That lack of investment was driven by many factors, including the bigger push for the green [energy] without having a real plan in how the transition was going to happen. So there was a scarcity of investment over about 5-6 years, and then when the Ukraine situation happened, a big volume was taken out of the market and obviously that would take [prices] even further up.”
Al-Kaabi predicted that the next couple of years would be difficult for Europe, notwithstanding the reprieve granted amid a milder-than-usual winter for much of the region.
“The issue is what’s going to happen when they want to replenish their storages this coming year and the next year. There isn’t much gas coming into the market until 2025, 2026, 2027,” al-Kaabi warned.
The shortages would also mean higher prices, the Qatari official said.
“Prices are a factor of supply-demand. I think some people think that we are very happy for high oil prices and so on. The biggest worry that we would have as oil and gas producers is demand destruction. And you can see that there is demand destruction, whether it’s gas or oil,” he said.
Al-Kaabi also took a jab at Western countries who spent recent years condemning the use of coal for energy on environmental grounds, but turned to the highly polluting resource themselves amid the energy crunch, pointing out that “all the countries that were calling for coal to be stopped are using it at record levels today.”
Buyers Want to Have Their Cake and Eat It Too
Also speaking at the conference was UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei, who echoed al-Kaabi’s concerns about lack of financing in oil and gas, and a basic “lack of understanding what is the future for many countries when it comes to energy strategy – what contributions or what percentages they would have of gas or even the pace of reducing their coal.”
“It’s not clear… And that unclear long-term strategy by many countries put them in a situation where it’s very difficult for them to commit for long-term gas contracts, which has in return made the companies of those who are developing the gas at a very difficult position with their financiers, because they would like to see long-term contracts, and those long-term contracts are not there. Everyone wants to buy, but they want to buy over a two or three year span. And that is not enough for someone to develop gas,” al-Mazrouei said.
Addressing the energy shortages caused by European countries’ politicized decision to reject gas supplies from Russia, the UAE energy minister said the supply crunch was the natural outcome of these policies.
“Of course Russia is a major producer of gas and LNG, and when you shift from one location to another trying to adjust, that takes time. And that’s what happened in 2022 when some of that [Russian] gas had been relocated to another market, and other gas from other markets [was] coming to Europe, especially from the US. But is that sustainable in the longer run? I think you would need more collaboration between the European nations on agreeing on the optimization of the FSRUs [floating storage regasification units, ed.] that are also limited, and also agree on some pipelines. I think that one of the things that contributes to energy security is pipeline gas,” al-Mazrouei said.
Al-Kaabi expressed hope that an “equilibrium” in global energy markets could be achieved after “some kind of a mediation” over Ukraine between Russia and the West, “and the sooner the better.”
“This situation will not last forever, and I understand that the Europeans today are saying there’s no way we’re going back to Russian gas. We’re all blessed to be able to forget and forgive, and I think things get mended with time,” the minister said.
Al-Kaabi clarified that he doesn’t expect countries who relied on Russia for 50, 80, or 100 percent of their gas to return to these same levels of dependence, but emphasized that Russian deliveries will inevitably resume. “They will diversify and they’ll learn from that situation and probably have a much bigger diversity [of supply]. But the Russian gas is going to come back in my view, to Europe. Is it next year, is it in five years, I don’t know, but once this situation is sorted out, and that I think will be a big relief to the whole gas sector, and to the whole market in Europe and will stabilize prices.”
Hypocrisy on Africa’s Energy Needs
Al-Kaabi also addressed the historic underinvestment in energy resources in Africa by Western countries, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on the grounds that they failed to meet the criteria of the global green agenda.
“We need growth. One billion people today are deprived of basic electricity that we all enjoy. So we need to be fair. And I think one point I’d like to just add to that on the investment side: it’s very, very unfair of some in the West to say that African countries should not invest in oil and gas and they should remain green or whatever you want to call it while this is God-given wealth that they can create for their national growth for their national growth and for their prosperity, and it is oil and gas that is needed for the world,” the minister said.
Qatar is the world’s fifth-largest producer of natural gas, and the second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas after Australia, exporting over 106 billion cubic meters in 2021, behind Australia’s 108.1 billion. Doha has announced plans to invest some $45 billion in its maritime fields to more than double production by 2027. The Gulf state ramped up gas exports to Europe through 2022, but warned its European partners that supplies are limited, as much of the new production capacity being brought online has already been reserved by Asian clients.
Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe plummeted last year, with Moscow accusing the Royal Navy of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines running through the Baltic Sea and their combined 110 billion-cubic-meter annual transit capacity. Poland shut down overland pipeline gas deliveries via the Yamal-Europe pipeline. Flows to Europe are now limited to supplies sent through the Soyuz pipeline network, which runs through Ukraine, but have been restricted to between 35 and 43 million cubic meters of gas per day.
Moscow Sees No Progress on Deal on Exports of Russian Agricultural Products – Ambassador
Samizdat – 13.01.2023
ANKARA – There is no progress in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between Russia and the United Nations on promoting Russian food products and fertilizers to the world markets, Russian Ambassador in Turkey Aleksei Erkhov said on Friday.
“As of today, 17 million tons of Ukrainian grain have been exported. However, we still observe distortions in the geographic distribution of recipients of Ukrainian food products. The situation with our products does not inspire optimism either. There is no progress in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between Russia and the UN on normalization of Russia’s agricultural export,” Erkhov said, as quoted by the Yeni Safak newspaper.
The ambassador also said that Russian producers of agricultural products and suppliers are still facing the blocking of payments via banks, high insurance rates, and limited access to sea ports.
The diplomat went on to say that Latvia, Estonia and Belgium were continuing to hold Russian agricultural products in ports, while Kiev had been blocking the export of ammonia supplies.
“There are delays even in the free delivery of Russian fertilizers to low-income countries. A small part of the cargo has departed from the Netherlands to Malawi. Latvia, Estonia and Belgium are continuing to hold our products in ports. The delivery of ammonia raw materials for the production of fertilizers from the Yuzhnoe port has not started, and the resumption of ammonia supplies is being blocked by Kiev only,” Erkhov added, as quoted by the newspaper.
The ambassador noted that the amount of detained products would be enough to provide 200 million people with food for a year.
On July 22, the deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations was signed by Ukraine and Russia to unblock shipments of grain, food and fertilizer in the Black Sea despite hostilities. The agreement was initially set to expire on November 19, with a possibility of extension if signatories consent. It was extended for 120 days on November 17.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that most vessels carrying Ukrainian grain do not reach the world’s poorest countries and have ended up in Europe. Putin has also voiced concerns that Russian grain and fertilizer products are not entering the global markets as stipulated by the agreement.
EPA And The Electricity Cost Crisis
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | January 3, 2023
Over in Europe, the energy cost crisis, particularly as to electricity, proceeds apace.
Germany, deep into its Energiewende (energy transition) that began in 2010, leads the way. Almost all coal and nuclear power plants have been closed in favor of a massive building plan for wind and solar facilities. After a decade of that, for the past couple of years, Germans have suffered consumer retail electricity prices of over 30 euro cents per kWh — close to triple average U.S. consumer rates. On November 25, a German news source called The Local (behind pay wall) quoted an energy market expert named Mirko Scholssarczyk for the proposition that “40 cents per kilowatt-hour was likely to be the new normal in 2023 and 2024, and that prices could even rise to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour after that.” Meanwhile, my own post from December 24 cited data from a Belgian think tank called Brueghel showing that Germany was in the process of spending some 260 billion euros, around an astonishing 7% of GDP, to subsidize consumers to keep their electricity bills from going beyond even these ridiculously high levels.
The UK, second after Germany in its rush to what they call “Net Zero,” has its own associated energy cost crisis. The basic policy prescription is the same as in Germany — massive building of wind and solar facilities and suppression of fossil fuels. Although consumer bills are capped by regulation, they went in October to a level approximately three times where they had been a year previously; and they were set to rise again in April, to some five times the previous level, although that may now be temporarily headed off by the UK’s own round of massive taxpayer handouts in the range of a hundred billion pounds or more.
Can we here in the USA learn anything from this folly before it is too late? The answer is, if it is up to our EPA, then no.
Readers may be interested in some back and forth on this topic that has recently occurred in the briefing in the case of Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA, pending in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. CHECC is demanding that EPA reconsider the so-called Endangerment Finding of 2009, which is the bureaucratic edict by which those geniuses claimed to determine that CO2 and certain other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and safety. The Endangerment Finding is the regulatory linchpin that underlies all U.S. government efforts to suppress fossil fuel infrastructure, whether power plants, pipelines, drilling, or anything else. You may recall that I am one of the lawyers for CHECC in this matter.
One of the things that you need to show to bring one of these cases is that the party you represent has what they call “standing.” That means that the party bringing the claim has or will suffer some concrete injury from the regulatory action in question. That’s why our client is a council consisting of electricity consumers. As we state in our Petition and in our Brief, “Each of CHECC’s members is a U.S. citizen and a member of a household that pays electricity bills.”
To demonstrate the effect on consumer electricity bills of the policy mix of wind and solar expansion plus fossil fuel suppression, we cite and describe the experience of Germany. Excerpt, from page 31 of the Brief:
In Europe, Germany began converting to renewables in 2010, and by 2015 30% of its electricity was from wind and solar. . . . The average German household’s electricity rate in 2021 was 32.16 cents per kWh, about triple the average U.S. rate. . . .
So what’s the answer to that, EPA? EPA filed its responsive Brief on December 20. From pages 20-21 of that Brief:
Petitioners’ extended discussion of electricity costs in Germany — involving a different country, market, currency, and regulatory regime — does not aid their efforts [to demonstrate standing]. . . . There is no effort to show that Petitioners or their members suffer “injury-in-fact” from electricity rates in Germany, or that any U.S. regulation (let alone the 2009 Finding or Denial) affected those rates.
That’s it. Hey, it’s a “different country”! Electricity prices in Germany don’t hurt you. Thus, says EPA, nobody has “standing” to challenge our Endangerment Finding.
I guess there’s just no way of knowing whether the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage being wreaked in Germany have anything to do with the forced energy transition. Anyway, it’s none of EPA’s business to try to figure that out. They are way too busy saving the planet.
Could the DC Circuit — supposedly one of our premier courts — fall for something this blindly ignorant? We shall see. Of note is that the “standing” question can be an easy way for a court to get rid of a tricky case without having to do the hard work of grappling with the merits.
UK businesses to see energy bills soar as government cuts subsidy to firms by 85%
Press TV – January 10, 2023
The UK government is set to scrap the energy subsidies for businesses in the next financial year by 85 percent, leaving small businesses in a dire economic situation, as the cost-of-living crisis squeezes Britons’ lives.
British businesses will see their energy bills soar from April after the government announced the stoppage of the current bills support scheme for firms at the end of March when the price caps for energy bills will expire.
Describing the current level of support as “unsustainably expensive”, the government has decided to reduce the support rate from £18bn to £5.5bn in the planned six-month period.
Speaking to the House of Commons on Monday, Treasury Minister James Cartlidge was at pains to confirm that: “It is not sustainable for the exchequer to continue to support large numbers of businesses at the current level.”
“No responsible, serious government anywhere in the world can permanently shield businesses from this energy price shock,” Cartlidge said, acknowledging the soaring energy costs across the country.
Cartlidge also insisted it was necessary to “cap the taxpayer’s exposure to volatile energy prices” rather than providing open-ended support.
According to the government’s own calculations, a typical pub will see its bills rise by almost £3,000 a month when the new scheme takes effect, while a small shop would pay more than £450 a month, as an increase to its energy bills.
As Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to restore fiscal credibility following the economic shock across the country, manufacturers say they may need to cut jobs and production due to rising energy costs.
Martin McTague, national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, criticized the government’s new plan and said the reduction in help is a “huge disappointment”.
“This is so out of touch,” McTague said in an e-mailed statement. “The government will inevitably have to come back.”
The cost-of-living crisis across the UK has brought the industries and labor forces under intense pressure, prompting tens of industrial actions over payment disputes each month.
Moreover, the worst impact of the cost-of-living crisis is yet to hit the already struggling Britons, a leading think tank has said, warning that families across the UK have only experienced half of the lost income they are expected to suffer during 2023.
The Net Zero death cult taking over ‘our’ NHS
By Stephen McMurray | TCW Defending Freedom | January 3, 2023
The climate change cult is insidious in every government department or institution it infiltrates. However, it is at its most dangerous when those people it infects are members of the medical community. When their apocalyptic hysteria starts affecting their decisions regarding patient care, urgent action is needed.
A disturbing document was recently published in the Lancet, entitled The Report of the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death: bringing death back into life. It was written by numerous medical professionals in the palliative care sector. It is nothing less than a propaganda piece promoting the idea that people who are suffering from possible life-shortening illness should not be given any potential life-saving treatments but, to help reduce our carbon footprint, should be allowed to die and actively encouraged to do so.
The authors make their feelings clear when they say: ‘The commission believes it is healthy to die . . . We are embodied creatures who are ultimately no more important than lizards or potatoes.’
It soon becomes obvious that their Net Zero zeal is driving this agenda when they state: ‘Treatment at the end of life will be an important contribution to the carbon footprint of health care . . . Everything, and especially death, must be thought of in the context of the climate crisis . . . In the report we explore the many values of death.’
The article is replete with climate change apocalyptic rhetoric, saying humanity is near extinction, one of the reasons being overpopulation, so we had better change our ways and stop trying to cure patients with potentially fatal illnesses and let them die.
As is common with the climate change cult, the document is replete with extreme left-wing ideology, promulgating the idea that expecting to be treated in hospital with life-prolonging drugs is a concept founded in racism. As only rich Westerners can afford proper health care, it is an example of a colonialist mindset and to achieve equity we should abandon this idea and die willingly like poor people in less developed countries.
Throughout the report they state how important it is to die at home surrounded by friends and family rather than in a hospital bed. This is not out of compassion but out of their desire to reduce the carbon footprint of end-of-life medication. The same medical profession that ardently supported the closure of hospitals to relatives of dying patients during Covid now pretend to advocate for having loved ones at the dying patient’s bedside. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking.
The authors also have the temerity to infuse the document with references to religious practices and spirituality to convince the reader that death is nothing to fear and that, by medicalising it, we are not having our spiritual and emotional needs met. If this was coming from the head of a religious institution it would possibly be understandable, but this is from a medical establishment who vehemently adhere to the reductionist view that our bodies are mere machines of flesh and bone.
When extolling the virtues of other religions’ treatment of the dying, the report cites a ritual practised by some Indian sects, which ‘entails a person coming to the realisation that they have no responsibilities or desires left. With the consent of religious elders, the person enters a slow process of fasting, where they give up one item of food a time, so that hunger pangs are tolerable. Over a few weeks or months, the person dies, often amid chants’.
Here the commission are implying that once you have supposedly nothing left to offer society, it is perfectly reasonable to want to die. Moreover, they don’t object to the cruel method of causing death by slow starvation. One can only assume that the relatives of those who have starved to death in our own NHS hospitals would be outraged by this callousness.
The document encourages carers to implant a sense of hopelessness in their patients so they more readily accept the idea of dying. ‘There is evidence that the will to live can keep people alive. But the tyranny of “positive thinking” can lead to ambivalence, guilt, and bad decisions . . . Hope increases the likelihood that people will believe that their illness is less serious than objective data might support, allowing patients to hold on to a low possibility of a favourable outcome and disregard the much greater probability of an unfavourable outcome.’ Clinicians sometimes ‘recommend additional treatments as a way for the patient to maintain hope, despite the clinical futility’.
What if treatment is not futile? Cases where patients are wrongly diagnosed with a terminal illness do occur. If we have learned one thing from the Covid era, it is that medical experts are far from infallible.
Their obsession with Net Zero and their disdain for human life is even focused on the patient after death: ‘While the dead consume no carbon, the disposal of bodies does. About three quarters of people in Britain are cremated after death, releasing carbon into the air. Alkaline hydrolysis, in which the body is dissolved, has about a seventh of the carbon footprint of cremation, and the resulting fluid can be used as fertiliser.’
The writers try to justify withholding treatments from patients who are potentially dying by saying the money could be better spent on treating others. This is totally disingenuous. Given vast sums of money for patient care, the NHS chose to spend it instead on pursuing the climate cult’s agenda of Net Zero.
They are going to spend £492million on changing all NHS light bulbs into LED ones. To put that into perspective, take the current outbreak of Streptococcus A infections spreading amongst children. We are being told there is not enough penicillin to go around. The cost of a 14-day course of amoxicillin is £0.18. There are approximately 12.7million under-16s in the UK. Therefore, it would cost under £2.5million to make sure there is enough antibiotics available to protect the entire childhood population.
It will come as no surprise that the report is in favour of legalising ‘assisted dying’. One of its main authors, Richard Smith, chairs the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. In 2017 he wrote an article in the British Medical Journal which began: ‘We should accept that humanity is dying and switch from cure to palliation – just as wise patients do at the end of their lives.’ Smith agrees with another palliative care physician who finds ‘acceptance of our mortality, unimportance, ephemeral nature, infinite ignorance, and futility to be very liberating’. Do we really want people who suffer from existential nihilism and think human life is unimportant and futile, treating anyone, let alone people who may be dying?
The fact that the climate hysteria with its accompanying left-wing, extremist ideology has infected the NHS could have serious consequences for people with potentially life-shortening illnesses. What criteria would the doctors use to decide which patients, if any, are worthy of receiving treatment? Would their decision be based solely on medical grounds or their ideology?
Most people who are diagnosed as being near the end of life are the older generation. It is exactly this demographic that the eco-zealots blame for the so-called climate crisis. What if the doctor or nurse was so indoctrinated by the climate crisis propaganda that their decision to withdraw treatment was based on their radical views rather than purely medical reasons?
Last April, an Extinction Rebellion activist called for the baby boomer generation to be euthanised. A sick joke, maybe, but the UK Health Alliance for Climate Change which is promoting this agenda acknowledges it works with Doctors for Extinction Rebellion.
The Lancet report highlights how deeply the Net Zero cult has infiltrated our health system. The obsession with reducing our carbon footprint is now such an integral part of many medical professionals’ mindset that they openly promote death as a healthy outcome. Do we really want anyone who thinks human life is unimportant and futile, least of all doctors in whom we are meant to put our trust, treating anyone, let alone those who may be dying? Surely such declared inhumane intent, running directly counter to the Hippocratic Oath, should automatically be grounds for being struck off by the General Medical Council.
Germany’s Public Television Suggests Bathing Once A Week Would Be Beneficial
Private daily showers to become a luxury for the privileged and wealthy in Germany?
By P Gosselin – No Tricks Zone – December 28, 2022
“What if we showered/bathed only once a week?”
What the BBC is to Great Britain, are what the WDR and ARD public broadcasting are to Germany in terms of television and radio presence.
Just some weeks ago, the Instagram site of WDR kugelzwei presented some tips that save heat and energy for citizens to consider: showering only once a week.
After all: “Around 100 years ago, it was still customary to bathe only once a week,” wrote kugelzwei. “Today, people almost look at you strangely if you tell them you don’t shower several times a week.”
The “benefits” of showering only once a week
Supposedly, there are in fact numerous benefits from showering much less frequently, according to ZDF’s kugelzwei. For example, people would maybe learn to become “a little more tolerant of body odor”, and the unwashed would save time in the bathroom every morning.
Use sinks, not showers
Moreover, fitness studios could replace showers with just plain sinks. After a sweaty workout, one could freshen up in cubicle with with a simple sink and a washcloth instead of using a shower cubicle.
Make the weekly shower a public social event
Another idea proposed by the WDR’s kugelzwei is public bathing: “Maybe showering or bathing could become a weekly highlight,” they suggest. “We would celebrate this in public bathhouses – perhaps also in the company of others.”
WDR also cited research from Great Britain on the impacts that lockdowns had on showering. “In a YouGov survey, 17% of Britons said they shower less since the lockdowns. Among younger people aged 18 to 24, as many as 27% skip showering sometimes.”
Ukraine to hike transit fees for Russian oil to EU – Transneft
RT | December 27, 2022
Ukraine will raise transit fees for Russian oil running via the Druzhba pipeline through its territory to the EU on January 1, Russian oil exporter Transneft announced on its website on Monday.
It is expected that Kiev will increase tariffs for transporting crude to Hungary and Slovakia by €2.10 per ton to €13.60 ($13.90), bringing the total hike to 18.3%.
In November, Bloomberg reported that Ukraine was mulling a tariff hike on Russian oil transit starting next year, citing a letter from Ukrtransnafta, the operator of Ukraine’s oil pipeline network. The Ukrainian operator had attributed the need for the price hike to the “continued destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure” which had resulted in “a significant shortage of electricity, an increase in its costs, a shortage of fuel, and spare parts.”
Transneft spokesman Igor Demin confirmed to the Russian media that the company had received the letter and was studying it.
Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike in April reportedly brought the total increase to 51% on an annual basis.
Druzhba, one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000 km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.









The following translation was performed free of charge to protest an injustice: the destruction by the ADL of Ariel Toaff’s Blood Passover on Jewish ritual murder. The author is the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, just outside Tel Aviv.