The forum is taking place in Moscow on October 3–6. Its main theme is Sustainable Energy for the Changing World.
The forum will be attended by representatives of the largest international companies and organisations, and leading experts. About 60 business events will be held within the framework of the official programme.
* * *
Speech at the plenary session
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Friends, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues.
I am very happy to welcome the participants and guests of the Russian Energy Week. This time, we have a record number of participating experts, people interested in power engineering – nearly 10,000, or more precisely 9,500 participants. You came here to hold an open and trust based discussion on the issues of the global energy agenda.
Russia is one of the most powerful players on the global energy market. We are among the leaders in oil and gas production and export, as well as in terms of power generation and coal mining. It is highly important for us to keep track of global energy trends in order to use our competitive advantages efficiently and, together with other countries, create a common energy space and a common energy future.
We believe that progress in global energy, as well as the stable energy security of our entire planet, can only be achieved through global partnership, working in accordance with general rules that are the same for everyone, and, of course, through conducting transparent and constructive dialogue among market players which is not politically motivated but is based on pragmatic considerations and an understanding of shared responsibilities and mutual interests.
The balance of supply and demand in the oil market reached owing to the agreement with OPEC reaffirms the correctness of this approach.
Russia will continue promoting dialogue of oil-producing countries to ensure the stability of the oil market and create conditions for the sustainable development of the sector and implementation of long-term investment plans. Indicatively, the demand for oil will be growing in the foreseeable future, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region. It is also growing in Europe and of course, in America.
I think Russia’s responsible partnership approach stands out and is understandable to everyone. Russia is implementing it in the gas market as well, providing an example of reliability and predictability. Our advantage is not limited to the tremendous deposits of natural gas. We also have delivery systems and the pipeline infrastructure, which together with low cost ensures the stable positions of pipeline gas in the market.
At the same time, as we know, trade in liquefied natural gas (LNG) is also increasing. In the past decade its consumption almost doubled.
Russia is an active participant in the LNG market. We are putting into operation new producing and processing capacities, carrying our strategic plans for the development of transport infrastructure, including the Northern Sea Route, and building an ice-breaker fleet that will allow us to organise year-round transit of ships, including gas carriers, in the Russian Arctic.
One more major area of the world’s energy sector is the coal industry, which has been demonstrating positive dynamics again. Just a decade ago few people believed in the prospects of this energy carrier but now we are seeing a steady growth in the demand for coal, first and foremost in the Asia-Pacific region. It is very important for Russia to consolidate and enhance its presence on this dynamic market.
We have already made a number of strategic decisions in this area. We are expanding the capacity of the Baikal system and the Trans-Siberian Railway, building up seaport infrastructure and working to make coal mining more effective and safe. And, of course we will pay special attention to eco-friendly technology of its transportation and consumption, including in electricity generation and other areas.
We will continue upgrading heat generation in Russia on a large scale and introduce digital solutions in the national power grid. We see these measures as a response to global challenges that are facing the electricity generation industry as a whole.
Accelerated demand for electricity in the world is forecasted for the next 20 years. Experts believe its consumption will double by 2040 while the demand for primary energy – oil, coal, gas and other sources – will grow by about 30 percent. Such trends are opening up opportunities for increasing both the exports of electricity and its production technology.
We have one more priority: to preserve the lead in such high-tech sector as the nuclear power industry. Today, Russia is actively building 25 energy units at nuclear power plants in 12 countries. In all we have 36 such energy units in our portfolio. We will be consistently working to increase the number of export orders in the nuclear power industry, complying with the highest requirements of environmental and industrial security
A separate ambitious task for the future is the development of renewable energy sources, especially in remote, difficult-to-access areas of this country, such as Eastern Siberia, and the Far East. This is opening a great opportunity for our vast country, the world’s largest country with its diverse natural and climatic conditions.
Friends, in conclusion I would like to tell you the following: sustainable and steady development of the energy industry is a key condition for dynamic growth of the world economy, enhancing living standards and improving the wellbeing of all people on our planet.
Russia is open to cooperation in the energy industry in the interests of global energy security and for the benefit of the future generations. And we certainly rely on active dialogue on these subjects and cooperation.
Thank you for your attention.
To be continued.
Unfortunate that potus doesn’t understand these words and is unable to articulate a rebuttal.
You would have to wonder why Putin opened with the following remarks if you were ignorant of the global situation:
“You came here to hold an open and trust based discussion on the issues of the global energy agenda….
“We believe that progress in global energy, as well as the stable energy security of our entire planet, can only be achieved through global partnership, working in accordance with general rules that are the same for everyone, and, of course, through conducting transparent and constructive dialogue among market players which is not politically motivated but is based on pragmatic considerations and an understanding of shared responsibilities and mutual interests.” [My Emphasis]
His characterization of Skripal came during the Q&A, and there are likely more gems to be had from that session.
Meanwhile, the Outlaw US Empire has unilaterally withdrawn from a 1955 Treaty with Iran in order to try and avoid today’s judgement of the International Court of Justice, https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201810031068561238-us-missions-iraq-threat-iran-pompeo/ and from the optional protocol on disputes to the Vienna convention, https://sputniknews.com/world/201810031068565352-vienna-convention-option-protocol-us-withdrawal/
Waging Illegal Aggressive War, Illegal sanctions, Violations of UNSC Resolutions, Breaking of Contracts, and Ongoing violation of the UN Charter and US Constitution since 1945 are just a few of the reasons why it must be called the Outlaw US Empire as no other term properly describes it. 80 years ago, appeasement didn’t work, and it’s clear it doesn’t work today either. Together the world’s nations must bring the Outlaw US Empire to heel and make it obey the Rule of Law and abandon its unilateral Rule of the Gun.
Ah, there it is. The reason behind this strange week, the dots that few will connect.
Putin speaking at a conference about “sustainable energy in a changing world.”
Right there, two phrases that are certain to set off Exxon corp and their puppets in the political theater. Say “sustainable energy” around an oil giant and watch them shudder. The, mention “changing world” to any of that class and they have nightmares about their children having to learn Chinese. Put them all together in one title of a conference at which Putin himself is speaking…… and well, now we know why the Shakespearian chorus of Exxon’s oil industry bit players like former Texas Governor Rich “the hair” Perry and former Texas Senator Hutchinson are suddenly frothing at the bit about the Park Rangers mounting a naval blockade of Russia (see Yogi Bear for how that’s likely to turn out, hey booboo?) and nuclear first strikes on Russia.
Putin, Sustainable Energy, Changing world….. enough to send some senior executive geezers at Exxon grabbing for their nitro pills and speed dialing their cardiologists.
Is that Putin in the middle next to George Bush in a blue Masonic gown?
https://www.henrymakow.com/2018/10/texe-marrs-confirms.html
Nope, it is a traditional Vietnamese dress:
http://www.cmariec.com/?p=114
The Saker
interesting
Thanks, Saker
For those who like to call Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country” here is Putin’s note on ecology:
“A separate ambitious task for the future is the development of renewable energy sources, especially in remote, difficult-to-access areas of this country, such as Eastern Siberia, and the Far East. This is opening a great opportunity for our vast country, the world’s largest country with its diverse natural and climatic conditions.
Friends, in conclusion I would like to tell you the following: sustainable and steady development of the energy industry is a key condition for dynamic growth of the world economy, enhancing living standards and improving the wellbeing of all people on our planet.
Russia is open to cooperation in the energy industry in the interests of global energy security and for the benefit of the future generations. And we certainly rely on active dialogue on these subjects and cooperation.
Thank you for your attention”. — President Putin
Nothing is going to save us from our energy problems, nothing and especially not renewables.
Spend some time reading and studying Gail Tverberg’s material and one will quickly see we are heading for a financial catastrophe because of affordability issues. On the one hand there isn’t enough money to pay for extraction of oil and gas and on the other the consumer is strapped because of high pump prices etc. But like she herself says if only the wages of non elite workers could rise high enough to help pay for the increased costs then likely we wouldn’t have a problem. That though is clearly not happening.
I am deeply afraid we are going to wake up to a world very different from the one we went to sleep in. Just this one article alone expresses the grave situation the world is in:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-15/truckers-asleep-at-the-wheel-as-diesel-price-shock-creeps-closer
Every time Chuck Paar makes the over 500-mile round trip from his home in Mt. Jewett, Pennsylvania, to Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, his 18-wheel tractor trailer carries 25 tons of sand or cement and burns about $265 of diesel in one day. That’s up from as little as $166 for the same route two years ago, and the increased cost of fuel is squeezing already thin industry profit margins.
It’s about to get worse.
I’ll just leave this here cuz there are people that won’t notice it.
“One more major area of the world’s energy sector is the coal industry, which has been demonstrating positive dynamics again.”
The dotting over Putin is very sad indeed. For he is part of the same system that is killing our air, water and land through the extraction and transport of “old world energy”.
Putin is not a solution and only exacerbates our decline as a species. The adulation that people place on him clouds the reality of our dire situation; the world simply cannot sustain human existence with this status quo.
I tend to agree that, from the eco point of view, he appears to be in the consumption camp. On the (geo-) political front, I think it gets a little complicated. But, as sailors are fond of saying, “Mother Nature always bats last”. We haven’t much time left. If any at all.
So, instead attack the person and country that is trying to stand up to Exxon and JPMorgan ruling the world entirely for their own short term profits?
Its that bunch that has pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. Its a bit of a contest to see whether global climate change or nuclear war destroys the human race first, but Exxon and JPMorgan are pushing both paths to destruction.
I love these little attempts to try to fool foolish westerners into supporting the Sanders/Hillary/Obama/Trump/Bush path to destruction by claiming some smaller infractions against those who appear to be standing up to those who clearly want to destroy the world.
A
“So, instead attack the person and country that is trying to stand up to Exxon and JPMorgan ruling the world entirely for their own short term profits?”
That is how israeloamerica’s enlightened web media explainers operate…
Always.
He is not killing our air, water and land. He is using it for our benefit. There’re number of things out there that are far more dangerous than extraction of “the world’s energy”. Military industrial complex is weaponinzing earthquakes, tidal waves, typhoons, lighting, rain, sky, earth, wind, fire and water …, add to this wi-fi radiation, nuclear testing, and round up from Monsanto and you will get something far, far more damaging to our existence than anything else.
Status quo changes. Here is a zero emissions nat gas prototype plant – it uses the CO2 instead of steam to turn the turbines, then having pure CO2, can pump excess underground.
Necessity is the mother of all invention – global warming really does its thing, we’ll start spending GDP on it. For now, we are just the unfortunate few that live in the 3-4 dirty centuries of industrialization. That is it. All the other things like CO2 and 400ppm+, is just a bump on a long road.
Speaking of energy, America openly threatens to impose a sea blockade on Russian energy trade around the world.
Apparently, when American energy corporations cannot compete with Russian firms, the Americans drop their propaganda about the “Free Market” and resort to interventionist state militarism. Sad.
Indeed, the Americans are increasingly unhinged and desperate, as their imperial ambitions to maintain American geopolitical and economic dominance are flagging.
The United States can only resort to thinly disguised acts of aggression and criminality in order to cling to its unipolar world tyranny.
To riff on John McCain’s insult describing Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country,” one could reply that America is a lunatic asylum masquerading as a democracy.
Blockading Russia? US Interior Secretary’s Dangerous Threat
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/04/blockading-russia-us-interior-secretarys-dangerous-threat.html
The key technology for the future of energy production is nuclear power. Russia is probably the World leader at present in terms of nuclear technology. Russia has a number of innovative designs (BN800 would be an example). Russia is not ignoring its nuclear sector, and it at least got a mention from Putin. But, it should be clear … coal is the past, uranium is the future. If China wanted some very clean air, they should build 500 nuclear reactors and close every coal plant in the country.
Nuclear power is “cleaner” on a good day.
But then there are the bad days. And after the bad days you are marking off 20km to 30km “exclusion zones” that humans should stay out of for at least a few hundred years.
That’s a “clean” that becomes very costly.
I just pulled out an old essay about oil and energy and the Soviet Empire and why it ultimately collapsed. It is great reading and info, actually given the speech by Putin I regard it as a must read historically. It has profound implications:
What Really Killed Soviet Union? Oil Shock?
Larry Hagman, the late U.S. actor that played the bombastic oilman JR Ewing, often quipped that the TV soap opera Dallas brought down the mighty Soviet Union.
“The opulence, the consumerism, the food, the cars — these things made them want more than their governments provided them,” claimed Hagman.
Academics, who had not foreseen or predicted the Soviet Union’s rapid meltdown, now argue that the Reagan Doctrine probably forced the empire’s demise. According to this theory, Moscow’s inefficient centrally planned state just couldn’t keep pace with U.S. military spending and went bankrupt.
But that’s not how Doug Reynolds and an increasing number of analysts now view the Soviet collapse. The 52-year-old U.S. economist, who taught energy economics in the Republic of Kazakhstan during the fall, says the Red Empire just ran out of fuel.
CUBA AND NORTH KOREA: ENERGY ORPHANS
With the official collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, both North Korea and Cuba became energy orphans.
The Soviet Union once shipped vast amounts of oil and fertilizer to both oil starved nations. In turn they exported their political allegiance and waves of anti-imperialist rhetoric.
When this energy system fell apart, North Korea and Cuba suddenly became global laboratories for how nations might respond to peak oil or massive disruptions in oil deliveries, writes Oxford history professor Jorg Friedrichs.
Their response is also a study in dramatic contrasts. North Korea’s one per cent resorted to vicious repression coupled with nuclear threats while Cuba tapped into 19th century agricultural traditions and demonstrated much resilience.
For decades North Korea used its Soviet oil subsidies to build a highly industrial agricultural system. In order to grow enough grain in an unseasonable climate, it heavily invested in machines and irrigation systems as well as cheap fertilizer to restore depleted soil resources.
North Korea poured so many fossil fuels into its industrial farming system that the nation’s per capita energy use in 1990 was twice that of China’s, says Friedrichs.
When oil imports stopped in 1991 along with cheap fertilizers, Korea’s elites directed scarce fuel supplies towards the military and heavy industry, effectively starving agriculture. Korea’s one per cent, in other words, saved fuel for tanks to defend the regime but not for tractors to feed its hungry peasants.
While the Hermit Kingdom’s well-fed rulers proclaimed a “Let’s Eat Two Meals A Day” campaign, rice and corn production dropped by 50 per cent between 1991 and 1998.
A calculated political famine then swept away nearly a million peasants or three to five per cent of the population. For ordinary people, the trains stopped and homes went cold in the dead of winter. Children grew thin and sick.
North Korea’s poor still live with recurring food shortages and a menu of endless political repression.
North Korea survived economic collapse and the disappearance of cheap oil by investing its remaining energies in protecting the status quo and dabbling in nuclear experiments.
As one observer noted, North Korea remains a land of two solitudes: “depressing poverty, pervasive food and medicine shortages, and crushing manual labour. Defending this grim reality is frightful military might in the form of ballistic missiles, hordes of armoured vehicles, long range artillery and one million soldiers.”
Or as Freidrichs concluded, “Korean-style totalitarian retrenchment is without doubt one possible response to a severe energy supply disruption.”
Cuba, however, replied much differently to a 70 per cent drop in oil imports, which precipitated massive wage losses and unemployment. Cuban economists compared the oil shock to an airplane falling from the sky and called it “the special period.”
Without Soviet oil, fertilizers and food imports, the caloric intake of most Cubans dropped from 2,600 to a lean 1,000 a day.
In response, Cuba abandoned state-owned farming (the Soviet equivalent of agribusiness in North America) along with its attendant tobacco and sugar monocultures.
Faced with a grave emergency, the government turned to small farmers and “organicos” (small urban plots) to re-energize its agriculture with human muscle, clever thinking and small open markets. (Farmers are well paid in Cuba.)
Dire necessity and not “ecological consciousness” drove Cuba to develop the world’s largest organic farming movement largely supported by the island’s barrios or tightly knit neighbourhoods.
People raised rabbits on rooftops and planted organic gardens on empty lots. Compost centres provided soil while traditional knowledge provided ways to combat pests with natural products instead of oil-based chemicals.
So energy transitions driven by shortages can come with different political faces. North Korea’s elites choose to starve its people and protect the powerful. In contrast, Cuba’s rulers abandoned Soviet rhetoric and sought solutions among their own people and in a restoration of small farms and a relocalization of food markets.
Concluded Friedrichs: “Countries with a strong authoritarian tradition may follow a North Korean path of totalitarian retrenchment. Countries with a strong community ethos may embark on Cuban-style socioeconomic adaptation, relying on their people to mitigate the effects of peak oil. It is of course possible to imagine other reactive patterns, such as the mobilization of national sentiment by populist regimes.” — Andrew Nikiforuk
When oil production, and its all-important revenues peaked, the Soviet Union lost the energy mojo that glued its empire together. The empire’s collapse was, in other words, another curious tale about energy transitions.
The numbers alone are convincing. Soviet oil production dropped an astounding 50 per cent between 1988 and 1995 from 12 million barrels to seven million barrels. (Under Putin it has returned to 10-million barrels.) As oil drained from the Soviet machine, the nation’s stability morphed into Russian chaos and a temporary political renewal.
Satellites of the Soviet Union also went into energy descent. Deprived of cheap oil and subsidized fertilizers made from cheap natural gas, North Korea experienced a famine and Cuba fell into an economic and agricultural crisis known as “the Special Period.”
Now, Reynolds is no crank or gadfly.
The fall of the Soviet Union, wrote Gaidar in a 2007 paper, “should serve as a lesson to those who construct policy based on the assumption that oil prices will remain perpetually high.”
Engineer, blogger and author Dmitry Orlov would mostly second that conclusion. He experienced the collapse first hand and attributes much of the chaos to peak oil.
“The Communist regime was so corrupt and stealing as much as they could that they didn’t pay attention to the system. It was on autopilot,” said Orlov in a recent talk.
Yet the story of how peak oil in a closed society precipitated the financial and geographical undoing of a major superpower remains a largely untold energy tale.
Like the United States, Russia was a global oil pioneer in the 19th century. While U.S. entrepreneurs such as John D. Rockefeller turned Pennsylvania’s black gold into a refining monopoly in the 1870s, Sweden’s Nobel brothers (yes of that Nobel fame) put their straws into the fields of Baku in Azerbaijan.
(The great French essayist Alex de Tocqueville noted as early as 1835 that Russia and the United States would some day (“by some secret design of Providence”) hold in their hands “the destinies of half the world.” He had no idea that the “secret design” would be their singular petroleum luck.)
(Orlov sarcastically compares the two superpowers to two quarrelling oil rich brothers that wanted more or less the same stuff — “things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination — but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results, each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.”)
Empire glue
Oil, however, shackled the whole damn empire together. Cheap petroleum kept eastern Europe under communist control while oil export revenue paid for essential grain imports along with bottles of vodka for state elites.
The union’s oil abundance also saved it from two global oil price shocks in 1973 and 1981. Those volatile events sent most of the western world (including the United States) into recession, debt and as well as an ever increasing dependence on foreign oil.
As oil prices rose in the 1980s, the Soviet Empire behaved like any incompetent petro-state: it pumped more oil to generate more revenue in order to build more infrastructure to consume more oil. It also wasted an enormous amount of petroleum, men and rubles in a vain attempt to conquer Afghanistan.
At the same time it subsidized the energy needs of North Korea, eastern Europe and Cuba. Europeans of all stripes flocked to East Berlin to catch the cheapest flights to India in the 1980s and all thanks to Soviet fuel subsidies.
But in the mid-1980s, Soviet oil production topped off at 12 million barrels a day due to poor management, old technology and lack of investment. And then oil production started to drop. As oil fields ran dry, the authorities spent more cash to coax more petroleum from aging reservoirs with massive water flooding programs.
But these technological fixes didn’t put much of a dent in the nation’s oil depletion rates.
After Soviet oil peaked
Just before Soviet oil production peaked in 1988 (the event walked hand in hand with a major drop in oil prices), the empire realized that it no longer had enough black gold to pay its bills.
In full panic mode, “the dynamically developing world superpower” (as experts then called it) started to borrow heavily to prevent a bread famine due to oil-spending industrialization schemes that pushed 80 million farmers into Soviet slums. “But peak oil pushed the Soviet Union into an abyss,” says Reynolds.
To save oil for its own needs, Moscow even started to charge eastern Europe hard currency for its oil and at global prices. “Without the free oil, the eastern European economies went into a tailspin,” says Reynolds. Shortly afterwards the whole Soviet machine disintegrated as well.
So oil scarcity lead to debt, which feed an economic down turn (and lower GDP) that eventually resulted in currency devaluation along with a dramatic drop in oil consumption of 50 per cent from 1988 to 1995.
The Soviet Union broke up; eastern Europe crumbled; and the Warsaw Pact dissolved as energy drained from the system like blood from a wound. Reynolds wonders if the European Economic Union and the United States can survive peak global oil without dissolving into smaller entities.
Slow to adapt
Another hard lesson has to do with alternative energy sources. None could replace the power density and versatility of oil. The Soviets researched solar and wind but couldn’t scale them up fast enough to make any difference during an oil shock.
“Change is going to have to come from a collapse in energy demand. People will have to change their lifestyles.”
Fourth, free markets can play a role in revitalizing the energy sector. In response to the collapse Russia privatized its energy assets and added new technologies that temporarily revived oil production.
But then Vladimir Putin nationalized the nation’s oil wealth to consolidate his hold on power. Russia remains a petro-state dependent on its oil and gas revenues.
But free markets did not change the nation’s energy system by inviting more renewables or by encouraging sound energy conservation.
“The former Soviet Union did not solve its energy crisis by using alternative energy, but by simply reducing its use of energy. This bodes badly for our own ability to depend on alternative energy,” adds Reynolds.
Last but not least, oil shocks promote social inequality. “The Russians had hyperinflation and massive unemployment. You also had the enrichment of the rich.”
To Reynolds, volatile and higher oil prices have thrust the world into an uncertain energy transition.
“A likely road map for the future can be discerned by studying events before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
https://thetyee.ca/News/2013/03/13/Soviet-Union-Oil/
got to love it, lol
Commenting on another blog about this piece I get a reply about Castor’s ‘special period’ and health care:
“Without Soviet oil, fertilizers and food imports, the caloric intake of most Cubans dropped from 2,600 to a lean 1,000 a day”
The results!!
The combination of fewer calories and more exercise produced the outcome that health experts are constantly propounding. The obesity rate fell from 12 percent to 7 percent in 1995, and diabetes mortality dropped 13.95 percent per year from 1996 to 2002, a period when obesity rates remained low. During the same time frame, coronary heart disease mortality decreased by 6.48 percent per year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/castros-cuba-a-public-health-phenomenon-in-the-90s-showed-the-benefits-of-national-weight-loss/2016/12/01/c179c6fe-b68d-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?utm_term=.30fd2479c162
and then there’s this lol:
“That’s a mess piece of article full of time sequencing inaccuracies and failed logic, for starters the Perestroika turn around started well before above stated time lines. Soviets supposedly aimed developing renewables is a joke statement given the demonstrably achieved world premier successes then (Russian continued up to this date) in the nuclear energy arena, ..
I’m not saying their peak in Soviet conventional oil extraction and large foreign aid outflows (often with dubious reciprocity value) were not an important issue to wobble of their system, but the underlying problem laid elsewhere, namely the West simply could resort into much higher debt debauchery and thus weasel out of 1970s turmoil..
I contributed on the topic more relevant summary just on previous comment page:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2018/09/23/the-worlds-fragile-economic-condition-part-1/comment-page-18/#comment-188849
When I first learned of the Z-44 Chayvo deep well on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East {see info graphic here WOW JUST WOW http://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-worlds-deepest-oil-well/}
I couldn’t help but wonder and ask are you kidding me a 40,000 plus deep oil well really? This is the lengths we are going to find oil? Or perhaps the Russians are looking for evidence of a God. I mean they couldn’t find him using a Soyus Space capsule perhaps looking in the other direction will prove useful? lol
And now look others are trying a similar feat of engineering {Arabs} all in the hopes of what trying to save mankind or rather some Sheik from the coming collapse of the Industrial Revolution?
Cheers, I guess to the Russians for at least trying to do what US didn’t at least not first anyway? Maybe this is why America wants to wage a war against them? They are always the first to accomplish what the world deems important? lol Now if only the Ruble was the reserve currency. O, wait sorry that’s going to be the Shekel pretty soon right lol?