Fuel dilemma 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to one German foreign policy expert, the right choice is clear: they should stop buying Russian fuel. "So what are we waiting for? How many bombed cities are enough?" But . . would German voters be so supportive that they happily turn down their thermostats 2-4 degrees next winter? Politicians get nervous about that kind of thing.

A perfect solution in their minds would be to suddenly go all-green, to rely completely on their solar and wind power, end their fossil fuel dependence completely - and thus fuse climate policy with energy security once and for all. (The European Union is aiming for that goal as well, with a plan to cut gas imports from Russia by two-thirds this year.)

But they're not there yet. So some combination of other, imperfect options will probably prevail. Natural gas, Germany's most important imported fuel, could conceivably come from Norway, America, Qatar, Azerbaijan. But these countries have very little more to sell.

Too bad. The U.S. was on track in 2017 (video above) to become the biggest exporter of LNG (liquified natural gas) in the world by 2022. 

Imagine the difference if we were already providing the LNG Germany needs. Western countries currently support Russia's economy with the purchase of gas/oil/coal at the rate of $1.1 billion/day. What happened to U.S. natural gas?