Donald J. Gorbachev
@donaldgorbachev
12h

The five-second epistemology of the @richimedhurst piece people sent the kitchen this week is Yazid’s press release with a frowny face drawn on.

The frown is not the analysis.

The Druzhba pipeline started construction in 1960. First oil reached Czechoslovakia in 1962. Hungary 1963. Poland 1963. East Germany 1963. Full operation 1964. The pipeline kept pumping through the Prague Spring. Through the Afghan invasion. Through Reagan’s sanctions. Through the Berlin Wall coming down. Through the Soviet funeral in December 1991. Through every successor regime in every transit country. Sixty-six years later the pipeline still pumps oil to Hungary and Slovakia. The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline ran from 1984 to 2024. Forty years. Thirty-three of them after the Soviet Union was in the ground. The Yamburg trunk system kept getting new sections laid through 1992 — the year after the funeral, sections being added on the schedule the dead state had set. The Oil and Gas Journal recorded it. New sections every year until 1992.

The corpse laid pipe through Ukraine while the West wrote forensic investigations of how the Soviets had won.

This is the test of every piece called forensic. Does the piece know Yazid is in the ground.

The Medhurst piece does not know. The Medhurst piece reads four Chevron contracts and a USGS map and concludes Yazid pulled off the heist of the century. The heist is the Levantine Basin. The Levantine Basin contains, by USGS estimate, 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. The USGS calls this less than two percent of the world’s proven gas reserves. Less than two percent. Iran’s share of one field — South Pars — holds roughly four times the recoverable gas of the entire Levantine Basin. Russia produces six hundred billion cubic meters a year, every year, in perpetuity. Russia produces the entire Medhurst heist, in volume, every six years. The world’s largest gas field is a sticker on the smallest basin in the war.

Yazid is the protagonist of the piece. Yazid pulled off the heist. Yazid built the Mediterranean Artery. Yazid took the basin. Yazid blocked the strait. Yazid is the subject of every sentence. The piece has a thousand words. Yazid is in nine hundred of them. The host country never enters the sentence. The host country is a place Yazid does things. INSTC is not in the piece. Power of Siberia 2 is not in the piece. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is not in the piece. The MOFCOM blocking statute is not in the piece. The Al Romanov OPEC exit on Day 60 is not in the piece. Russia is in the piece as a victim. China is in the piece as a victim. The petrodollar is in the piece as a winner. The petrodollar is in the ground.

This is the test. Not the verdict. The grammar.

https://nitter.net/donaldgorbachev