I went to school this morning fully prepared to teach without any heat. The walk to school normally takes about 20-25 minutes but today given the melting snow and icy patches it took more like 30 minutes. By the time I was at school I was pretty warm after the walk but I was also greeted by heat. (Phew)
This morning I had read online at the Sofia Echo, the English language newspaper, that 28 schools yesterday requested permission to close because of insufficient heat. The article explained that three had been given permission to do so. I figured that my school was pretty serious so unless they absolutely had to we’d be teaching today.
My two classes went great. My students were clearly hoping for something to come up so that they could go home early but no luck in my morning class. In my afternoon class, there were a number of students who arrived late. Not a great way to start off the new year but then again the roads were not great and it had started to snow once more.
After class I headed into the teachers lounge to do some paperwork. Our principle came in to tell us that she would be coming around to take the temperature in our classrooms. If the temperatures fell too low they would shorten the class day like they did yesterday. Apparently, the last two classes of the day yesterday went from being 90 minutes long to 60 minutes. I am not sure why the rational was to shorten the classes rather than to send people home but then again I don’t understand a lot of choices that are made in this country.
In this case, I guess that the school and the teachers want to teach because if they don’t then it will have to be made up at the end of the year. It seems strange to me that a school would say it’s too cold to sit here in this room for 90 minutes but it’s totally okay to sit here for 60 minutes. We’ll just teach through the cold. I think the breaking point is if the room dips below 18 degrees Celsius. Man, that seems pretty cold to me.
By the time I left school at 3pm, the snow had been coming down steadily for the last hour. I don’t know if the school shortened the day but I can only assume that did. It took me maybe 35 minutes to get to the city center from my school and at points the snow was blowing right into my face. Not fun. It snowed until about 6pm.
I stocked up on some food after my MoM’s comment on my last post (Moscow: why cut the gas?) And then set about reading up on the heating crisis we are having in Bulgaria right now.
Brussels seems to be stepping in and to help look for a solution to the natural gas problem. The NYT is reporting on a “Possible deal in Gazprom dispute.” Nothing is set in stone yet but it looks like some independent monitors will be sent to Ukraine to make sure that Ukraine isn’t stealing gas and then Russia will once again up the flow of natural gas to Europe.
Based on conversations I have had with Bulgarians they seem to believe that it’s pretty lucky that non-Eastern block countries (aka France, Austria and Germany) have been impacted by the reduced gas flow from Russia to Ukraine or no solution would be on the horizon. Pretty depressing if you think about it.
Now that I am home, my apartment is a reasonable temperature and I’ve had a chance to defrost after sometime out in the snow running errands–I’ve had a chance to really think about the situation. The fight that Russia and Ukraine are locked in seems on the surface to be about three things
- the price of natural gas (apparently Gazprom wants to raise the price to $450 per 1,000 cubic meters from $179.50) ,
- late payment on previous shipments of natural gas and
- a question of whether or not the Ukraine is siphoning gas out of the pipelines that run through their country.
But there seems to be something else happening here. Russia seems to be testing it’s limits–pushing the line to see how far and how much they can get away with. In a year, they’ve more than doubled the price of natural gas and they push the issue to the brink at moment when the rest of Europe needs natural gas the most. The middle of winter.
It begs the question: how much can they get away with? This is a question that can only be answered with another question: how much do we need the gas? And at this point, it’s pretty clear how dependent we are on the gas and that we are in desperate need of it.
Until now the idea of energy security was extremely abstract to me. I got it in principle but in the states, I mostly heard talk of energy security in relationship to petrol/gasoline. The high prices at gas stations were shocking for a country that has relied on cheap gasoline for so long but in many ways it was our own fault. We bought inefficient cars and chose not to invest heavily in green technology. The situation stunk but we could have been smarter about the whole thing earlier.
Here however, I finally get the issue of energy security in a real and practical way. This country is without natural gas and we cannot (or are struggling to) heat our homes, schools and businesses. It means that the elderly and the sick in Bulgaria are at risk. I am not an economist but I also assume that the economy is at risk in already uncertain times. We are it seems wholly dependent on outside natural gas. And it’s this dependence on another country that is I think the scariest.
Do I think that re-starting one of Bulgaria’s communist era nuclear reactors which was deemed unsafe by the EU is a solution? No not at all. Do I think that a country like Bulgaria (or really any country for that matter) can ever be completely independent when it comes to energy? No. But I it has become clear to me that this will be one of the major issues that will shape the political and economic structures of the early 21st century. I just didn’t expect to be living in this reality so soon.
The Ukraine-Russia relationship is actually a terribly complicated one.
They have been been the same country for centuries and have these complicated love-hate issues and identity crises. Ukraine is trying to create its brand as a pro-western country, but it wants to buy gas on preferential prices
(it’s a having vs eating the cake situation). The way they deal with Russia and their common past is actually typically soviet – they do everything in the most annoying and painful (for the Russians) way, and they often get an equally irrational answer.
Ukraine is in a perpetual political crisis and a president vs prime minister war. It is almost bankrupt and unprepared for the world economic crisis (which naturally stimulates gas theft). So the timing of this confilict can be linked to both the Russians carefully choosing the moment for revenge and to one of the sides in the interior political war having stronger connections in Moscow.
Ukraine wants to join the EU and NATO, and this conflict represents it as someone very unreliable – which is a good thing for Russia; though Russia doesn’t earn a lot of credit either. If Ukraine is deemed unreliable, there are chances that several other projects for Russian tubes avoinding Ukraine (North Stream and South Stream) will get completed faster. But there are also chances that Europe will want to avoid Russian dependence altogether.
So naturally, energy dependence is a huge thing. Most of Russia lives on oil export – so low oil prices are a disaster for them. Now, there is this magic thing called Middle East, which can drive the prices high… It’s currently in the news, and it sounds similar to gas, btw.
Thanks for keeping everyone up to date on what’s happpening in Sofia. I hope you continue to stay warm enough and the situation is resolved soon. Especially before we arrive in town at the end of the month
[...] one thing kind of sticks in my throat: as Carolyn mentioned, many Eastern Europeans think “…it’s pretty lucky that non-Eastern block countries (aka France, Austria and Ger… And I, unfortunately, have to agree with her. If the Western side wasn’t in trouble, it might [...]