Just yesterday, we looked at how the sanctions on Russia largely seem to be failing and potentially backfiring, at least thus far. Now, more evidence of this trend is coming to light. One of the biggest issues involved in waging economic warfare against Russia has been the complications caused by Russia’s position in the global energy market. Energy exports are a huge part of the Russian economy, so cutting them off would put significant pressure on the Kremlin. But as one of the world’s leading suppliers, particularly when it comes to natural gas, there aren’t enough replacements for those products available so we’ve largely had to leave them alone. As a result, not only are Russian exports failing to be dampened, they’re actually increasing and the country is on track to set an all-time record for Liquified Natural Gas exports.  (Washington Examiner)

The European Union is slated to import record amounts of Russian liquefied natural gas this year, a trend in conflict with its aim to reduce reliance on Russian fossil fuels and cut off funding for President Vladimir Putin‘s war machine.

Spain and Belgium were ranked as the second- and third-largest buyers of Russian LNG, behind only China, according to a report from the nonprofit group Global Witness. Spain accounted for 18% of Russia’s total LNG sales in the first seven months of 2023, while Belgium accounted for 17%.

As a whole, EU imports of the chilled Russian gas were up 40% in the first half of this year.

The EU keeps insisting that they’re going to largely end the use of natural gas by 2027. Energy analysts have been calling that a pipe dream for a while now and this news supports that belief. If anything, most of Europe is even more dependent on natural gas, particularly LNG, than they were prior to the original Paris climate conference.

As long as this continues, we are clearly not going to starve the Kremlin of enough money to cause unrest in the streets or force Putin to consider pulling out of the war. And even if a couple of countries can be convinced to cut off or at least reduce their LNG imports from Russia, China will just buy up all of the excess as they’ve been doing since the war began. Africa remains a large market for them as well. There simply isn’t enough global solidarity against Russia to allow these sanctions to really put the screws to Putin.

Seeing these sales numbers should be infuriating to people in the United States. The LNG market is surging and that was supposed to be our marketplace. Prior to Biden taking office, LNG production in the United States had been rising quickly, with specialized export terminals being constructed and more in the planning stages. That largely ground to a halt after Joe Biden arrived and started talking about “ending fossil fuels” and signing a flurry of executive orders.

So what was the end result? Essentially the same amount of LNG is being produced anyway and it’s being sold and shipped around the world. (Sorry, climate alarmists!) But it’s Russia collecting all of the money instead of the United States. And to add irony to injury, those sales are funding the Russian war machine that we were supposedly trying to shut down.

You can read more about Europe’s actual attitude toward LNG and how it’s helping them diversify their energy portfolio and make their energy grid more durable here. America is once again being shafted by the climate cult and the Kremlin is turning out to be the largest benefactor. The word “ironic” doesn’t do this situation justice by a long shot.