Rolland E. Kidder

 

 

The Post-Journal

Ukraine And The Coming Winter

LOCAL COMMENTARIES

JUL 16, 2022

ROLLAND KIDDER

 In a plea for more weapons of defense, the President of Ukraine recently expressed hopes that his country’s war against Russian aggression could end by winter.

To my mind, he was expressing more than a hope for an end to the war. He was expressing the reality of what winter will bring — the need for heat.

Think about what would happen in this community if it were announced that this coming winter there would be little or no natural gas available. Most homes here heat with natural gas and there would be panic as to how we could heat our homes without it. With Russian gas being reduced and potentially shut-off, that is the reality that Europe is faced with. Natural gas prices have more than doubled here and overseas, but in Europe it is more than a pricing problem — gas may not even be available.

Some might say: “Well, shift to propane. It is usually a bit more expensive but it would give us heat just like natural gas.” That sounds good but the reality is that you would have to change the burner tips in your furnace, water heater and all other natural gas appliances since propane burns hotter than natural gas. Besides, propane (Liquified Petroleum Gas–LPG) is an oil derivative so it has its own problems with supply and demand pricing…think of what it has recently cost you to fill up your car with gasoline.

What about shifting to electric heat? That might be an option in places like Jamestown or Mayville which get a majority of their electricity from the hydro plant at Niagara. But, the rest of us would have to purchase more electricity from the grid which already has close to 40% of its production coming from natural gas.

Sometimes these “details” about energy get lost in the political shuffle. Will more electricity come from renewable sources in the future? Yes, but that doesn’t help anyone who wants to heat their house this winter.

The United States has made representations that it will supply more liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe to help wean them off Russian supplies. Yet, LNG is much more difficult to liquify and transport than LPG and countries receiving LNG must also have the necessary infrastructure to deliquefy it. In addition, our promising to sell more of it could well be a hollow promise since we don’t have enough plants now to meet added demand for it. To complicate things, recently, one of the major LNG plants in our country failed and shut down, thus cutting the availability of a significant amount of it for shipment.

Of course, New York state doesn’t help in any of this. We are big consumers of natural gas but have effectively banned the exploration and development of it in our state. How does that work?

And, how does all of this play out in the politics of Europe? There is a lot of support now for Ukraine but will it hold up when people’s homes start to get cold?

I think that is what the President of Ukraine was getting at. Russia has been the biggest supplier of natural gas to Europe, and Putin is now playing hardball, threatening to shut down his gas pipelines. If you had to choose between heating your house and supporting Ukraine, which would you choose? Winter is coming.