Russian Economy General News: #13

Russia got itself into this mess by building over 20 GW of electric generation capacity with imported natural gas turbines from companies like Siemens and GE. Right now Power Machines has the GTE-170 but it hasn't entered service yet. So who knows how well it will work. And production of GTE-170 gas turbines is still quite limited. It will increase over the next years. Right now it is like two a year and is expected to eventually reach ten a year. But even once it hits the maximum production rate and everything works fine, it would take over a decade to replace the imported gas turbines. If this ends up happening at all.

At ten turbines of 170 MW a year, you would need like 12 years of production to replace 20 GW. But replacing all the gas turbines might not be necessary, since GE F-class turbine production was localized in Russia, and Iran can manufacture Siemens F-class gas turbines.

This is what the oppositional press is supposed to do.
And is doing.

There is a huge difference between finding problems and bringing them to public attention to make things better in your country, and whining because putin is in power and putin is bad and everything is shit because he is in power because the owners of this publication can't make slightly more money when putin is in power.

A genuine press looks for the truth whether it is in the interests of the owners of the publication or not. They are trying to find problems and expose them so they can be solved and things made better.

That is why the west is so broken because the media don't care about the general public and just care about exposing opposition related issues to weaken their opposition and to hide their own crimes and mutual crimes both sides are guilty of. That is why both parties in the US can unite against Russia and Assange and Snowden and China and Iran because they all make money or risk arrest if anyone actually listens to what they have to say and take them seriously.

Not all openly pro west western funded organisations in Russia need to be shut down, because often letting them speak is the best policy because they really hate Russia and Russians and if you shut them down some idiots might think they are victims rather than criminals.

As usual we have the inferior Russia drivel being pushed like there is no tomorrow. Here in Ontario, Kanada, no new nuclear power plants are being
built and only gas power plants are being deployed to replace coal power plants.

Here in New Zealand the electrical grid was run by the government but the usual bullshit got some government down the road to sell it off and make a quick buck.

The usual reasons.... government run businesses are bloated and inefficient, private enterprise will introduce competition and electricity will get cheaper and we will get better coverage etc etc.

Well of course New Zealands electricity grid is stretched along a long narrow country with hydro electric power generation in the south of the south island and the majority of the population in the north of the north island. We had coal fired power stations and hydro and so when the hydro lakes were full they shut down the coal fired stations to save coal and only lit up the coal fired stations when the lakes were getting low and no rain was forecast.

When they privatised the electrical grid different companies bought different things, so the coal fired power stations were owned by a company and different companies owned the hydro electric power stations... so the coal fired power stations ran all the time because they don't make money when they are not running.

The result was the government one year made a small amount of money for something that the country has been investing in the last 80 years or so, and some companies got some assets real cheap.

As usual with privatisation, they fired most of the staff and then hired back 1/3rd of them to do the actual work, which means more efficient when there is no problem but if there are a couple of problems all at once like high winds or floods then it takes a while for services to be returned.

In Auckland a few years back they had 6 main power cables taking power into the city and two were working, because they weren't maintaining them properly because that cost money so they saved money not doing that.

Auckland is our biggest city with almost half the countries population and they had power cuts because they were working on one of the cables that still worked and had to turn it off.

New Zealand would really benefit from having a floating nuclear power station in the far north because that is where demand is and transmitting electrical power thousands of kms from the south to the north is just a waste of energy most of the time.

Of course anything that encourages people to look at their own power usage and their own power generation is also a good thing... solar power is one thing that is free to set up and wind power is much neglected yet is also free. Obviously you don't want to have to rely on such things but sometimes it just makes sense and putting power back into the grid at certain times could be quite profitable and useful.

Russia got itself into this mess by building over 20 GW of electric generation capacity with imported natural gas turbines from companies like Siemens and GE.

It can get itself out of what you call a mess by developing their own alternative turbines for the job.

Right now it is like two a year and is expected to eventually reach ten a year. But even once it hits the maximum production rate and everything works fine, it would take over a decade to replace the imported gas turbines. If this ends up happening at all.

They don't need to replace them all at once... just the same they still operate Airbus and Boeing airliners too... no hurry no panic.

At ten turbines of 170 MW a year, you would need like 12 years of production to replace 20 GW. But replacing all the gas turbines might not be necessary, since GE F-class turbine production was localized in Russia, and Iran can manufacture Siemens F-class gas turbines.

There are other turbine types of smaller size they could use in larger numbers... plus... what has gas turbines have to do with nuclear power stations?

My understanding is that gas turbines are used for pumping gas through gas pipes... turbines in nuclear power stations can be rather different... look at the tiny nuclear power generators like RTN-400 etc.

Kuznetsov could look at building new turbines based on the PD-35 and bigger for such specialist roles if needed.

Besides this is the sort of stuff Russia can sell to the world too.... I suspect BRICS countries will be interested in new electricity grid infrastructure and why would Russia build new nuclear power stations with European or American turbines now? Having Russian gas turbine capacity should be a given.

Fertilizers have found a place in Europe
Imports from the Russian Federation increased in 2023

In 2023, against the backdrop of a reduction in gas supplies from the Russian Federation to Europe, Russian chemical companies increased sales of gas processing products—nitrogen fertilizers—to this market. A key reason is high gas prices, which caused EU nitrogen fertilizer production to fall in 2022 and not recover. But experts warn that if gas prices in Europe continue to fall and nitrogen fertilizer prices rise after falling in 2023, this could increase the competitiveness of European plants and reduce imports from Russia.

Former buyers of Russian gas in Europe in 2023 significantly increased the import of nitrogen fertilizers from the Russian Federation, according to a study by the Center for Price Indexes (CPI). Thus, purchases from Germany almost doubled compared to last year and more than seven times compared to 2021, reaching almost 550 thousand tons. France increased purchases by about a quarter and doubled, respectively, to approximately 440 thousand tons.

Experts note that Russia retains first place in imports of nitrogen fertilizers into EU countries, and its share in total imports increased over the past year by two percentage points, to 24%.
...
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6525073

The Europeons seem to continue to buy nitrogen fertilizer from Russia and even increased its purchase. And Kommersant's talk about natural gas price getting lower is kind of idiotic. There is just not enough LNG to run Europe's heavy industry. Period. Europe will become an importer of nitrogen fertilizer. As simple as that.

In 2023, against the backdrop of a reduction in gas supplies from the Russian Federation to Europe, Russian chemical companies increased sales of gas processing products—nitrogen fertilizers—to this market.

Hahahaha.... as they reduce the amount of gas they buy from Russia and increase the gas they get from the US and other sources like domestic sources like Norway, the gas they are getting is increasingly processed so they can't extract various products from the gas they get.

They end up buying those products and Russian products will be cheaper than American or Norwaywegian.

German chemical industry will suffer from this too...

To spell it out... the chemicals the German companies used to extract from raw Russian gas supplies can't be extracted from American or Norwegian gas because they already extracted it, so not only are they paying more for their energy but the German chemical companies that got raw materials from the gas don't get any work and the chemicals they used to produce have to be bought on the international market... and who wants to bet that the Russians make the cheapest products from gas processing?

Germany pays more for gas and the companies that extracted chemicals from that gas no longer have a source for materials so they will end up buying what they used to make themselves from the Cheap Russian gas from Russia.

So generous of the west to sabotage itself economically like this...

Processing natural gas into fertilizer is step one in many vital production chains of the chemical industry. And the chemical industry is the bedrock of modern industrial economies - literally nothing can be done without use of chemical products.

And now you know why Russia keeps pumping out fertilizer for cheap and even dumps that shit for free to poor countries around the globe.

But Obummer said that Russia does not make anything.

And now you know why Russia keeps pumping out fertilizer for cheap and even dumps that shit for free to poor countries around the globe.

They sold the gas cheap so the west could buy it in bulk and use it widely as a cheap energy... they didn't extract the other chemicals in the gas so Germany and other European countries could do that for themselves from the cheap gas they were buying from Russia.

But Europe was still not happy and stopped with the long term contracts and dragged their feet on permits for pipelines, and decided to increase their storage capacity so they could buy at spot market prices when it is super cheap to save even more and where has it gotten them?

Having to build port facilities so they can buy US gas at 4 or more times the price... US ships heading for Europe would continue to other ports if the price wasn't high enough. Ships would wait for the price to go up before entering the ports... which means goodbye reliable cheap Russian gas and hello sharks waiting for top dollar prices before they deliver.

Kiko wrote:Belousov named the condition for Russia to achieve the status of the fourth economy in the world, by Olga Ivanova for VZGLYAD. 03.14.2024.

Belousov: Russia can become the fourth economy in the world with GDP growth of at least 2% per year.

Russia can become the fourth economy in the world, provided it maintains sustainable growth of at least 2% per year, First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Andrei Belousov said at a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with members of the government.

According to him, Russia should become one of the four largest economies in the world by 2030. Today, in terms of GDP and purchasing power parity, the Russian economy ranks fifth. Calculations show that Russia can become the fourth economy in the world, ahead of Japan, provided that it maintains sustainable growth of at least 2% per year with a gradual acceleration by the end of the period to 3%, TASS reports.

Earlier, Putin said that Russia's GDP growth in annual terms in January amounted to 4.6%.

https://vz.ru/news/2024/3/14/1258102.html

If Russia had reunified with Belarus, the decent part of the former Ukraine (maybe with the rest as a protectorate), ideally part of Kazakstan... and maybe some other bits, it would be close to being the economic superpower the USSR was. There's also the argument that with enhancing the Christian population it could absorb more of Central Asian states. Which in many ways could be a win-win situation. Uzbekistan isn't the most healthy of places, but its not far off 50million people, many of whom would appreciate better wages and better economic reintegration with Russia. Perhaps the solution is an enlarged Russia, and an enlarged Eurasian Union. The key question is how the Eurasian Union should be defined. Some say it should be most of the former USSR. Others say it could enlarge, for instance to include the 80m in Iran... or other places. Of course Iran is very different to Russia culturally.

Russia needs to create sane and fair borders. The Bolshevik borders are criminal. This means no Belorus (no such ethnicity as Belorussian), most of Ukraine
which was never Ukrainian, and northern Kazakhstan which was settled by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in the 1600s which excludes any claims by Kazakhs to
this land since they moved into the southern part around the same time. Kazakhstan's borders are BS like those of Soviet Ukraine.

This should contribute 20-30 million people to Russia. Russia will still have under 170 million and be half of the US and much smaller than China. But Russia
does not need a billion people to be a superpower. There is no simple rule for scientific and engineering capacity based on the size of the population. Russia
already demonstrates this when you compare it to the USA and to China.

Only the addition of 20 million people would boost the GDP.
That´s how India became such a big economy.
Adding old territories to Russia proper would boost investment into infrastructure.

Without a methodology for this estimate we do not know how valid it is. But returning ethnic Russians to Russia is the right move.
I am not in favour of the poly-ethnic conglomerates like the USSR since all the ethnic republics developed resentment syndromes which
likely stemmed from their own inferiority complexes. Russia does not need these boat anchors around its neck. Maybe some sort of
free trade zone, but no EU style union.

There are at least two dimensions here: the number of the population, which definitely needs to be increased. It's impossible to achieve this with ethnic Russians alone unless every family has 5-6 kids right away. Despite huge efforts, Russia is closing the gap in terms of population replacement, but where's the growth?

So, we need immigration. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's done gradually and promotes integration, without multiculturalism. The current status of all Turkic immigrants from the former USSR shows that there's still a lot to be done.

Regarding numbers, 500-700 million? I'd say that's right. 500 million for the EU, 350 million for the USA, and 1.5 billion for India and China. If you want to play in the same weight category, you need to have enough weight.

Taking over new territory and new bureaucracy is not easy, but rebuilding infrastructure and connecting it to the Russian economy and of course kicking out the crooks and in a few years you have regions and areas that grow and develop and generate income and excitement amongst the people that has been missing for a while... it is a good thing.

Even during the height of the cold war there were periods of growth and development when  all the tradesmen were busy and retail sales were up and everyone was working to keep up with demand etc etc... at the time you were working hard so you didn't realise it was good times but looking back it enabled you to pay things off and get into credit or buy a few things you wanted rather than just things you needed...

Of course having said that there will be Iranians and North Koreans and Cubans and people from a raft of other countries with young men they would like to send to Russia to work to earn money to help out their families at home and then when their contracts end they go home with skills they can use to get good jobs or perhaps even start up their own companies.

In this part of the world the Australian mines offers something similar... a disciplined young man who works hard and is careful with his money can go work in the Aussie mines for 5 years, and as long as he doesn't blow his wages on hookers and drugs or gambling and saves up everything he can, when he comes back home he can buy a house with only a tiny mortgage attached to it and go from there...

There are lots of ways of improving production without adding lots of bodies... including 3D printing and other machines that make parts automatically and assemble parts automatically... etc etc.

Sometimes population increases are more trouble than they are worth and put a strain on infrastructure...

There are lots of potential good sources of people for Russia - Egyptian Copts and other Middle Eastern Christians are one.

Another are pro Russian countries in Asia like Vietnam and China. Even North Korea.

The CIA and other western intel agencies will take note and try to infiltrate and sabotage and brainwash...

You can even turn a Serb against a Russian simply by complaining that Russia was never there when Serbia needed them... the Russian will make excuses and the Serb will go on the offensive and the next thing all ties are cut... the west are experts at such things, they have been doing it for centuries... they didn't get where they are by accident.

GarryB wrote:The CIA and other western intel agencies will take note and try to infiltrate and sabotage and brainwash...

You can even turn a Serb against a Russian simply by complaining that Russia was never there when Serbia needed them... the Russian will make excuses and the Serb will go on the offensive and the next thing all ties are cut... the west are experts at such things, they have been doing it for centuries... they didn't get where they are by accident.

There is much more than that. The West will selectively "invest" and "aid" to create economic connections to blackmail and bribe a part of the public and the superstucture, together with intensive PRs like "be allied with USA will make you rich" blah blah blah. Or they pretend to be sympathized with marginalized or unfortunate people in the countries and direct all the hatred to the local governments, etc etc.

The worst things is that at the moment, Western imperialist power is holding the wealth and core technology of the world (although most of these were made from others) and they used that to blackmail or to manipulate the public into being enslaved by them.

But the good thing is that as more and more people are being exposed to realities, forces are gathering to even the odds and give things back to the rightful place.

Like I said, Asia and Africa are both huge resevoirs of pro Russian people who may be willing to go to Russia. So is Latin America.

One may bring as much as 15-20 mln people if one tries hard enough. Look at Australia and New Zealand - both are made in 50% of people who have been in the country for no more than 3 generations. I see no reason why Russia can't be like this too.

ALAMO wrote:

But Russia is a polyethnic conglomerate, no matter if you like it or not.
Its nation constitutes 190+ ethnical groups, some as small as a few thousands.
Yet retained ethnical differences, which is a rather good indication for a both development and personal freedom.
Russian diaspora abroad can be even as high as 30 mln, but it won't be a reservoir of resettlement.
Those people have their private life already set.

Because Russia is not multikulti but there is a concept similar to die Leitkultur - you adjust to Russian culture and not the other way around. If Russia's gove let small, controlled influx of people willing to work, contribute there's nothing wrong but it is very much postive for contry, economy. More money generated, more brains for R&D, more hands for production and bigger army.

For this you need ideology to keep people united. NOt not woke


in the second generation kids speak Russian on native level, on second-third identify as Russians. Surely better then native Sobchak or Navalny scum.

GarryB wrote:CIA and other western intel agencies will take note and try to infiltrate and sabotage and brainwash

CIA and western intel agencies are now controlled by Chinese intel.

GunshipDemocracy wrote:If Russia's gove let small, controlled influx of people willing to work, contribute there's nothing wrong

Only if these migrants are Europeans. If Russian government allows Africans and Asians to enter, Russia too will become a third wirld shithile very soon.