Energy crisis blame-shifting

How it works

Europe’s energy choices deserve criticism. Decades of dependence on a single supplier, nuclear phase-outs, lax rules on who may own gas storage, and a market design in which the gas price sets the electricity price: all of it is fair game. The narrative is not that argument. It picks one villain, “the sanctions” or “the green deal”, and deletes the other half of the story: the supplier that reduced deliveries, and the war it started.

The dates are the antidote, so here they are. European gas prices were already rising through the summer and autumn of 2021: demand had bounced back after the pandemic, and Gazprom, while honouring its long-term contracts, declined to sell extra gas on the spot market and let the storage sites it controlled in Europe sit unusually empty. The International Energy Agency said publicly that Russia could ship more. On 24 February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. In the spring it demanded payment in roubles and cut off Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark. In June it reduced Nord Stream 1 to 40%, in July to 20%, citing a turbine; at the start of September it stopped the pipeline entirely. European gas prices hit their record in late August 2022. At the end of September the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up.

Now the other column. During that price shock the EU had not sanctioned Russian gas at all. The oil embargo on seaborne crude began in December 2022, on refined products in February 2023 (after the peak), and pipeline oil to Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia was exempted. The “green policies” version fails the same test: the price that exploded was the price of fossil gas, not of wind turbines. Yet both versions ran in parallel in the same months. EUvsDisinfo logged them under titles like “the energy crisis is due to European mistakes, not Russia”, “Poland closed the Yamal pipeline”, “the US blew up Nord Stream to sell its own gas”. Why energy? Because Central Europe ran on Russian pipelines for fifty years, and because every household gets a bill every month, which is the best broadcast schedule propaganda could wish for.

Example

@grid_realist, 8h Gas bill doubled. Not because of Putin, because Brussels sanctioned cheap Russian energy and bet everything on windmills. Simple.

@marci_timeline, 7h Gas was never sanctioned. Gazprom cut Nord Stream to 20% in July 2022 and to zero in September. Your bill is the price of gas that stopped arriving, bought at panic prices from elsewhere. Not simple, but true.

Notice the last word of the first post: Simple. The narrative’s whole job is to make a complicated thing simple in one direction. A real explanation of the 2022 bill has five causes and two columns.

Why it works on you

• You pay the bill, not the invasion. Your receipt is concrete and monthly; a pipeline decision in Moscow is abstract and far away. The nearest explanation wins (see scapegoating).
• It flatters your scepticism. “They blame Putin for everything” sounds like independent thinking. It can also be the entrance to nothing is true, everyone lies.
• The market really is complicated. With a dozen real causes, any one of them can be sold as the only one, especially on a chart whose x-axis starts in February 2022. See misleading charts.

What to do

When someone does it to you: ask for dates. When did prices start rising? When did Nord Stream stop? When did the oil embargo begin? Three dates, and the story has to be rebuilt. You do not need to win the energy-policy argument to win this one.

When you catch yourself doing it: if a chart that convinced you starts in 2022, ask to see 2021. If the word “sanctions” appears in your head every time a bill does, check which sanction you mean and when it started.

In a comment section: do not defend every policy. That is a losing position, and an honest one should not be held. Say: “Energy policy is debatable. The supply cuts are not.” Then link the timeline; see also ‘sanctions only hurt you’, the narrative’s twin.

Don’t confuse it with

• Criticising energy policy: dependence on one supplier, nuclear decisions, storage rules, market design. Legitimate, necessary, and done by people who are not on anyone’s side.
• Saying sanctions and the green transition have costs. True, and fine as part of the picture. The narrative is when they become the whole picture.