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Something Has Changed And World War Over Ukraine Is Back On The Table

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

The eyes of the world have been fixated on the war in Iran for the past six months, meanwhile, the single-most dangerous flashpoint on the planet has gone mostly ignored. Until, that is, waves of Ukrainian drone strikes activated a run on global diesel markets. Suddenly, everyone is paying attention again…

Russia is the second largest diesel exporter in the world next to the United States, supplying around 12% of total global exports (the US supplies 22% of exports). To put this in perspective, only 10% of global diesel exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz under normal conditions – And that supply is coming from seven different oil producing nations including Iran.

After western sanctions, Russian diesel shipments have gone primarily to Turkey, Brazil, India and China. However, because Russian supplies continued to circulate on global markets, these countries did not have to draw fuel from alternative sources.

Conditions have now changed, and not for the better. Constant Ukrainianian drone strikes on Russian refineries have forced the Kremlin to stop all diesel exports and retain their existing supply for the population and the war effort.

If you want to know why diesel prices have been hit hard since July, Russian export cuts are the reason. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has steadily climbed since July according to independent satellite tracking confirmation (anyone using AIS transponder data alone will have a low and inaccurate count). It’s the Russian refinery issue that has inflated diesel prices in recent months.

With Russian sources completely cut off, multiple nations will have to draw from other producers. Meaning, the pie is shrinking, but everyone still wants the same size slice they’ve always had. If the US also stops diesel exports in response, it would be a disaster for foreign markets and result in true supply shortages (Europe would be hard hit; half of their diesel imports come from the US).

In 2024 I questioned why the Ukrainians kept going after odd targets such as nuclear early warning radar stations rather than key resources like oil refineries in order to stop Russia’s attrition strategy. Well, it looks like the Ukrainians finally figured it out.

Russia’s attrition strategy has been highly effective in grinding down Ukraine’s troop strength (to the point that they were recruiting mostly men over 40), but the key flaw of a slow moving front line and a protracted offensive is that it requires a large stockpile of resources. Ukraine’s drone attacks have a low success rate, but if they send a thousand UAVs to attack a refinery and a couple get through, then that’s still a win in the long run because it drags down Russia’s lumbering attrition-based operation.

The Trump Administration has asked Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries due to the instability to global markets, but Zelensky has ignored the request. It’s not surprising; they’ve finally found a tactic that works.

Of course, now the rest of the world is being affected by diesel supply shortages when this was not the case a year ago. One would think the Europeans, who have been particularly throttled by price hikes on fuel and energy, would be in a rush to end the war. And maybe they are about to intervene, but not in the way we might hope…

I think it’s fair to say that the Ukraine war would have ended a long time ago had it not been for the interference of European governments propping up Ukraine and encouraging them to NOT make a deal. Ultimately, Russia is going to keep the Donbas region whether Ukraine likes it or not. But Zelensky refuses to accept this outcome, so, the war rages on much longer than it needs to.

The situation gets much more dangerous, though,with the push by European elites to put boots on the ground. They seem to want to start a world war. Beyond the diesel resource problem which puts a timetable on the war for both sides, European governments have increased troop movements to eastern borders and it’s starting to look like they’re getting ready for something big.

Poland has been building extensive trenches and fortifications using German combat engineers on the border of Belarus. Germany has established a 5000-man armored brigade in Lithuania, the first time the Germans have stationed permanent combat troops abroad since 1945. NATO has launched a 9th multinational battle group with regular exercises in Finland near the Russian border. Multiple nations are sending rotating brigades to Latvia, Romania and Estonia. Even the Canadians are sending troops.

Recent weeks have seen repeated Polish and Baltic fighter activations due to alleged drone or aircraft activity near alliance airspace. Allies are pre-positioning equipment and planning much larger stockpiles of ammunition and resources in frontline states. NATO has also published extensive contingency planning for the eastern flank.

There has been a surge in political and civil-preparedness messaging for civilians. Polish warnings about possible disguised drone/missile incidents. French measures to protect critical infrastructure after hybrid-attack briefings. German military-hospital capacity planning. Lithuanian plans for evacuation routes. UK public preparedness bulletins including recommendations for civilians to stock up on food and supplies..

Even Switzerland has been posting security and preparedness messages for citizens, indicating a “deteriorating security situation” in relation to the military build up.

All of this could be viewed as a defensive posture and not necessarily planning for direct engagement with the Russians; but consider for a moment that Russia has not once threatened to attack European or NATO targets and has consistently said that their only interest is Ukraine. Yet, Europe has removed their “trip wire” defense strategy and replaced it with a permanent front. It sure does seem like they are getting ready for an event which might provoke the Russians to strike targets outside of Ukraine.

What would that event be?

To be clear, I’m not a big fan of the Russian government. Evidence suggests that they engage in regular psy-ops in the US and there are far too many conservative influencers who kiss Putin’s ass. That said, I’m not a fan of Ukraine or the Europeans either, and I suspect the EU elites would LOVE to trigger a world war if they thought they could get away with it.

Why? Well, here’s my theory…

Europe has been the primary target of a decade long cultural replacement operation. Mass immigration has been utilized to undermine the stability of economic and social structures. For years I have been warning that these third world migrants are being imported as a mercenary army to control the locals and prevent rebellion against future leftist agendas.

We are already seeing confirmation of this in the UK, where migrants are being integrated into police forces to subdue conservative protesters.

The thing is, this invasion plan has sparked an enormous counter-movement of European patriots in countries like Britain and Germany. Anti-immigration and conservative parties like Restore in the UK and the AFD in Germany are seeing wild success in membership and elections. Meaning, time for leftists/globalists is running out and they need to do something quick before they lose direct governmental power.

A world war sure would come in handy, right? All kinds of restrictions on the populace can be put in place, along with a perfect excuse to delay or eliminate normal elections. Would the progressives actually go that far just to prevent conservatives from taking government?  We all know that they would.

So, we have two running clocks that did not exist at the beginning of the Ukraine war: We have a diesel shortage clock, specifically for the Europeans. And, we have an avalanche of conservative movements with major elections happening from 2026 through 2029.

My concern is that the leftists are about to go for broke in an effort to keep power. I don’t think they’re crazy enough to want a nuclear war, and perhaps the Russians want to avoid this as well. If that’s the case, then the result would be a large multi-region conflict that MIGHT turn nuclear if either side feels like they are losing.  The main goal of the EU elites at that stage would be to lure the US into the fray.

In any case the aftershocks would be disastrous. Let’s hope that conservative and populist movements in Europe can pull the rug out from under their far-left governments before the situation on the eastern front escalates any further.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 23:25

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Korea Picks A $22 Billion Texas Gas Plant As First Down Payment On Its $350 Billion Pledge To Trump

Ten months, one tariff threat and several "sleepless nights" later, South Korea has finally found somewhere to put the first piece of the $350 billion it promised to invest in America. The winner is a gas-fired power complex in Encinal, Texas (population 540, where real estate is about to ballistic), and it is built to feed the one thing Washington can never get enough of: electricity for data centers and chip fabs.

According to the FT, Seoul this week chose the proposed $22.3 billion, 6.3-gigawatt complex. The White House could announce it as soon as Wednesday, possibly with Trump announcing it himself, depending on how preparations for Xi Jinping's arrival in Washington go. Trump and President Lee Jae Myung met for 30 minutes on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The deal still needs final US approval.

Donald Trump, left, has also pressed South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung to support the war in Iran © Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Yonhap reported that the plant will be built in stages: an initial 1.4GW of simple-cycle gas turbines, followed by roughly 4.9GW of more efficient combined-cycle generation. However, in the first whiff of even more vaporware, no customers have been confirmed. Korea's KED Global adds that there is no power purchase agreement yet, with signing targeted for 2027. It also reports that the Trump administration asked for a roughly 25% increase in the project's size, which would take it to about $25 billion.

How the money works

Under the November 2025 agreement, Seoul supplies $200 billion in upfront capital for projects in "strategic industries," capped at $20 billion a year, plus a separate $150 billion for shipbuilding. Project cash flow is split 50/50 with Washington until Korea recovers its principal and interest. After that, Korea's share drops to 10% and the US takes 90%. It is a generous arrangement, just not for the side putting up the money.

Korean officials told the National Assembly that Encinal could generate $43 billion to $45 billion of revenue over 20 years, which they say is enough to recover principal and interest. Those numbers deserve a closer look:

• $43 billion to $45 billion works out to roughly $2.2 billion a year, or about twice the upfront capital. That is gross revenue. It comes before fuel, operations, maintenance and financing costs, and pretty much everything else... and gas is the main input cost of a gas plant.
• Korea receives only half of the project's cash flow until it is repaid. On a plain reading, recovering $22 billion plus interest from a 50% share would take distributable cash flow well above the capital invested. Seoul has not yet published a breakdown showing how revenue of about 2x capex achieves that.
• The official line is that every project must be "commercially reasonable." But as Haeyoon Kim of Korea Tech and Trade Watch told the FT, the US-led Investment Committee decides what counts as commercially reasonable, and Trump makes the final call. Seoul can object, but objecting risks higher tariffs.

Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the government had "been negotiating intensely with the U.S. in order to pursue commercially viable projects," and that the goal was to expand Korean companies' entry into the US market. Lee said last week the talks had given him "sleepless nights."

Following Japan's lead

Tokyo went first. As we reported in February, the opening $36 billion tranche of Japan's $550 billion pledge was led by SB Energy's 9.2GW gas plant in Ohio (which as we reported last night is suddenly having major issues, having delayed its IPO), which Commerce Secretary Lutnick called "the largest natural gas generation facility in history." Japan has since added up to $40 billion of small modular reactors in Tennessee and Alabama.

If Seoul was looking for a template, it found one. The cost per unit of capacity is almost identical. At $22.3 billion for 6.3GW, Encinal comes to about $3,540 per kilowatt. At about $33 billion for 9.2GW, the Ohio plant comes to about $3,590 per kilowatt. Both are well above what US combined-cycle plants cost before the AI boom, which is what happens when every hyperscaler on earth wants the same megawatts at the same time.

The real constraint: turbines

Money, it turns out, is the easy part. As we detailed earlier this month, large gas turbines are effectively sold out through 2030. Applied Digital's CEO warned that orders placed today may not arrive until 2032. Some developers are so desperate they are going back to 19th-century technology, boilers and steam, just to get power online sooner. Encinal's plan, 1.4GW of fast-to-deploy turbines first and then 4.9GW of combined-cycle capacity, means getting in line for the same heavy-duty equipment every hyperscaler is already chasing.

Goldman's latest research on the power problem (available to pro subscribers) published just hours before the FT story, shows why Washington wants these megawatts. In a Carbonomics note on Wednesday, Michele Della Vigna's team said that with power availability "emerging as a key constraint on AI infrastructure deployment" and grid connection times in the US and Europe expected to lengthen, they "raise our outlook for BTM [behind-the-meter] power generation from 40GW to 67GW by 2030."

Goldman now expects on-site gas generation to meet about 28% of US data center power demand by 2030. Its preferred beneficiaries of conventional gas generation are GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, Mitsubishi Heavy and INNIO. Not a Korean name among them, which leaves an awkward question for Seoul: how much of the equipment spending on a Korean-funded plant will actually end up with Korean suppliers.

The competition for that equipment is not only American. The same Goldman research flags that Alibaba Cloud is targeting 20GW of data-center power by 2032, which is more than three Encinals for one Chinese cloud provider alone.

Then there is the question of who ends up buying the electricity. The obvious candidates are the hyperscalers, and they are not short of cash to spend. Goldman credit strategist Amanda Lynam last week raised her forecast for hyperscaler investment-grade bond issuance to $420 billion in 2027, "more than a 60% increase vs our full-year 2026 estimate of $250 billion," with 65% to 75% expected to be placed in the dollar IG market.

In other words, the would-be customers for Encinal's power are borrowing record sums to build data centers that need exactly this kind of plant. The bull case for Seoul is that one of them signs a PPA by 2027. The bear case is that Korea has fronted $22 billion on the assumption that someone will, while the AI capex cycle that Goldman's own economists say has companies "over-earning" is nearing its peak.

The bigger picture

The project comes as the US-Korea relationship is under strain on several fronts:

• Iran: Trump has pressed Seoul for help in the war against Iran, and Lee has ruled out sending forces in a combat role.
• Submarines: Seoul wants US help building nuclear-powered submarines. Washington agreed last year to cooperate on technical requirements and fuel, but there has been almost no progress since.
• Linkage: One Korean official told the FT that US counterparts had signaled further progress on the submarines would come only after Seoul announced some of its promised investments. Pay first, then we talk.

Nuclear projects and a scaled-down Alaska LNG project are expected to follow Encinal. Korea is also negotiating a stake of about 7% in Westinghouse, down from the 15% it originally sought, according to KED. For now, the first check is going to a Texas gas plant with no customers, no power purchase agreement, turbines that may not show up this decade, and revenue projections that still have to be squared with a 50/50 cash-flow split. That leaves $328 billion to go.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 23:00

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