Did you know that the largest energy company in Denmark (76% owned by the Danish State – for now) is named DONG (formerly Dansk Olie og Naturgas A/S)? That’s just the tasty opening tidbit to an interesting tale currently resounding within that country’s halls of power, as reported on the webpages of Denmark’s public broadcast company, DR (formerly known as Danmarks Radio).

The problem is, DONG needs money for further infrastructure investments. Fortunately, it seems to have found an outside investor willing to purchase an ownership stake. Unfortunately, that investor is rather too “outside,” as in from “outside” the country.

In today’s European Union that should not really be any sort of issue. Cross-border investments are supposed to be able to proceed unimpeded; indeed, public tenders are to be awarded blind to the nationality of the bidding companies (as long as they are from EU member-states).

Still, especially when it’s about the company that heats so many national homes – and in a cold Scandinavian climate – it’s natural to have a preference for business dealings with fellow nationals. That preference is further sharpened here from the fact that it’s no less than Goldman Sachs who is the foreign party lined up to do the investment. And wouldn’t you know it:

One of the [deal’s] points of criticism is that Goldman Sachs has placed the investment in a tax haven, so the State would lose tax receipts in connection with payment of dividends from profits.

The Vampire Squid doesn’t miss a trick!

OK, but the tale does not end there: four Danish pension funds have now collectively come up with the money to make the investment instead. But the problem is that their bid might simply be too late, maybe: it’s hard to interpret the rules here.

In any case, the Danish Finance Minister, Bjarne Corydon, will chair a meeting on Tuesday to make a decision. Goldman Sachs representatives likely expect things to be all arranged then, but Minister Corydon – and even the Danish PM herself, Helle Thorning-Schmidt – are getting pressure to go with the pure-Danish alternative, however last-minute. This lobbying is coming in particular from the Danish People’s Party, (in)famous for its generally ultra-nationalist policy stances and general contempt for the EU, but for all that still quite influential within Danish politics.

While hardly the most enthusiastic EU member-state, Denmark still has a good record for keeping to the rules. Here, though, the argument for national chauvinism seems strong, considering the counterparty.

A brief review here of an important European energy project: Nord Stream. That’s the natural gas pipeline currently being built under the Baltic Sea, connecting the Russian coastal town of Vyborg (Выборг, north of St. Petersburg, on the Finnish border) with a western terminal near the East German coastal town of Greifswald. But as the Nord Stream homepage explains, “[This] is more than just a pipeline. It is a new channel for Russian natural gas exports, and a major infrastructure project which sets a new benchmark in EU-Russia cooperation.”

All true, in a way. But the crucial fact that the website is in no hurry to mention is that this pipeline will deliver Russian natural gas to Germany while by-passing the countries through which a cheaper, overland pipeline would normally go, in particular Poland. To be sure, pipelines to Europe through Poland (and the Ukraine) already exist. But Russian relations with those countries are usually rather prickly; with the completion of Nord Stream, the Russian authorities will have the option within a few years to cut them out of natural gas transmission completely – literally to leave them out in the cold, with no gas, as has already happened this past decade during a number of winter-time confrontations with Ukraine. (more…)

“Sports car maker Porsche has a problem in America,” an article up now in the “Autoworld” section of Holland’s Algemeen Dagblad announces. And indeed it does, as you might figure out from that piece’s headline, whether you understand Dutch or not: Porsches slurpen te veel voor VS (even though slurpen in Dutch does not mean “slurp,” not quite, it means “gulp,” as in “to drink something fast.”)

That’s just the problem: Porsches do “gulp,” they don’t just “slurp.” But up to very recently no one really cared about what sort of MPG a Porsche would get – if you had to worry about that, then you certainly could not afford the car in the first place. In these energy-conscious times, however, that’s not allowed anymore: everyone has to worry about MPG, says the US government, and that includes Porsche. Or eventually it will, at least, for the American authorities did grant Porsche an exception to the requirement put out last year that all autos sold in the US meet minimum MPG requirements – that in exchange for collecting from the German company a couple hundred dollars as a “fine” for every such car that is presently sold.

But that’s a temporary exception, and it expires in 2016. For Porsche cars to meet the requirement then, the article reports, they would have to achieve an average 10% improvement in MPG each year in-between. Yes, hybrid Porsches are on the way, but not in time for 2016. And that’s when that little “fine” presently being collected balloons up to amounts that can reach $37,500 per vehicle sold.

Today’s Washington Post passes along word from US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Daniel Fried, characterizing Russia’s recent intervention into Georgia as reflecting Russia “being angry and seeking revanchist victory” – “the sign of a weak [nation].” Putin, Medvedev & Co. seem to have gotten about all they wanted there, so is this just happy talk? Whistling past the graveyard? Maybe not; it’s a view also supported – and expanded upon – by Prof. Herfried Münkler of Berlin’s renowned Humboldt University writing in today’s Frankfurter Rundschau (The Russian Power). (more…)

The hostilities in Georgia seem to be dying down now. Russian forces are withdrawing – or at least they are supposed to withdraw, under the terms of the cease-fire they signed, but there is considerable doubt as to whether they are actually fulfilling that obligation.

In the meantime, the countries of the NATO alliance struggle to come to terms with the new ruthless military face Russia has shown in this crisis. Germany now stands central in that military alliance, in the same way it has stood central for some time now within the European Union, again because of its sheer weight of population and economic power (and, who knows, maybe also its reputation for military ability in the past), which makes German commentary on these recent developments particularly interesting.

A very good contribution comes from Jochen Bittner, who writes a weblog, called Planet in Progress, that is carried off the Die Zeit webserver. (more…)

I’ve mentioned before in this space the fascinating evangelical outliers to the usual crowd of stolidly-secular European on-line newspapers, the Dutch publications Nederlands Dagblad (“Christianly engaged”) and Reformatorisch Dagblad. Damn (- whoops! Sorry . . .): two of them, even, and in a country of only 16 million souls!

At least these papers definitely provide an alternative take on happenings in the public sphere, both national and international. (more…)

Hmm . . . maybe all this fuss about Georgia is really ultimately about oil! The French international affairs monthly Le Monde Diplomatique has contributed to its website the detailed map (in English) you see below of all existing and planned pipelines – for oil and for gas – in the Caucasus. Click on it to go to the original webpage and the full-size map.

Yesterday we had occasion to examine the delightful article from the Frankfurther Rundschau by Dietmar Ostermann about the Hummer SUV. Sad to say, Ostermann could not avoid the conclusion that this Monster Car’s days seem to be numbered. But fear not! Hope for resurrection is at hand, as we learn today from Der Spiegel (With the Hummer to the Putting Green) – if you can accept a cut-down model designed to roam on the manicured grass of golf courses, and with electric drive, that is. (more…)

From the leading Dutch business newspaper Het Financiële Dagblad comes a report about an encouragement pronouncement from current OPEC chairman Chakib Khelil (OPEC Chairman Khelil Sees Oil Price Sharply Falling).

According to Khelil, the price-per-barrel of over $140 that we recently saw for oil was “abnormal.” (more…)

Next Monday, 11 February, is promising to be quite an eventful day on the Gazprom front – that’s of course the gigantic Russan natural gas company, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, of which the Russian government owns a majority stake. On the one hand, it’s the same-old same-old, what we’ve all seen before, for Monday is the day that Russia, speaking for Gazprom, will cut off all natural gas supplies to the Ukraine due to alleged non-payment by the latter of $1.5 billion. Curiously, Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has been scheduled for some time to arrive in Moscow for a visit on Tuesday. At least he’ll be glad to be away from his native country and someplace instead where it’s actually warm inside the buildings, though one can imagine that the diplomatic talks he will engage in might still be rather frosty.

But that is all par for the course for a European winter; I can remember recently thinking to myself “Hmm, it’s already February – shouldn’t we have had the regularly-scheduled Russian energy cut-off crisis by now?” More interesting is that next Monday is also the evening of the going-away concert in honor of Dimitri Medvedev – Gazprom chairman now, but Vladimir Putin’s “recommended” candidate for president of the Russian Federation at the upcoming March 2 elections, and therefore also a shoo-in as the next Russian president. The concert will be headlined by the legendary English rock-n-roll band Deep Purple, and this was recently commented upon in the New York Time’s weblog “The Lede: Notes on the News,” by Mike Nizza, who notes that Putin himself will surely be present as well. (more…)