Agreement for Nabucco Pipeline signed - gas route without Russia.

[derspiess]

FWIW, from the few pics I've seen, Azeri chicks are kinda hott.  Armenians, not so much.

[Zanza]

Take that Schroeder.  You wanker.

You know who holds Schröder's North Stream job - i.e. political advisor - at Nabucco? His old ally and foreign minister Joschka Fischer. We've got all bases covered.

[The Minsky Moment]

As fascinating as the discussion concerning the relative constitutional position of Chechnya v. Azerbaijan under the former Soviet Union is, it is neither here nor there. 

Re Nabucco the $100K question is whether the Azeris will send their gas through Nabucco or whether they will send through Russia.  The short answer is that they might, but not if the Russians decide they really don't want them to.  So with respect to the Azeris - who at present are the only ones who have actual gas to be supplied - Nabucco adds zero in terms of diversifying away from the Russia risk problem. 

Nabucco it seems to me is a dubious attempt to solve what may be a non-problem.   The problem such as it exists is that Europe has to import a lot of gas, and that gas comes from far away from places that aren't very reliable or stable.  Nabucco amounts to diversifying risk by multiplying it.  It holds out the prospect of reducing reliance on Russia by increasing reliance on places like Turkmenistan, Iraq, or maybe in the last resort Iran.  The logic of that tradeoff is somewhat elusive, to put it mildly.  I also would raise an eyebrow at the thinking of the same EU leaders who have taken such a hostile line towards Turkish membership in the EU in effectively giving the Turks a stranglehold on their gas supplies.

Another way to look at this is to conclude there really is no problem in the first place.  Yes, the EU risks being dependent on russia for vital energy supplies - but the russians can cut Europe off only at the cost of committing economic suicide.  Russia has devolved into a colonial economy, heavily dependent on its energy production monoculture to survive as a viable going concern.  So there is a sort of "energy MAD" in operation.

My understanding is that the commercial virtues of Nabucco have always taken seat to  the perceived political benefits.  If that is wrong and the project truly stands on its own commercially I guess it is justified.  But I doubt it because the reality as it stands today is that if the project could be built overnight, there  would be no gas to put through the pipeline.  As of now, the expectation of future deliveries is speculative.  And I think the purported political benefits are illusory at best.

But hey - I that's how the Commission wants to blow several billion euros, power to them.

[Queequeg]

FWIW, from the few pics I've seen, Azeri chicks are kinda hott.  Armenians, not so much.

They look fairly similar, though Armenians often look more Jewish.  Azeris near Armenia look Armenian, near Georgia look Georgian, in Iran look Iranian, etc...the actual genetic contribution of the Turkic invaders was minimal, almost wholly male and distributed equally among all Muslim populations of the area, and had an impact on Christians as well.