#russian oil export

[narrative-theory]

How Russia's Military Defied Expectations: Lessons from Richard Wolff

I have posted another video on Richard Wolff: How Russia’s Military Surprised Everyone: A New Reality

In this short video, Richard Wolff explains how Russia's military and economy defied global expectations during the Ukraine conflict. Discover insights into their adaptability, the role of oil and gas exports, and what this means for geopolitics. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more updates!

[just2bruce]

Dark fleets and Sanctions

We now have two worlds of international commerce, as a result of trade wars and the Ukraine-Russia conflict. As the Western world, principally the EU, UK and related countries and the US look to tighten sanctions on Russian oil exports, some shipowners are finding creative ways to get around the rules set by the West. One important escape hatch is to flag ships with a Flag State that doesn’t…

[head-post]

EU countries want assessment on potential sanctions against Russian LNG

European countries request an assessment of a possible restriction on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) as part of the next package of sanctions.

EU diplomats stated that countries, such as Belgium, Germany, and France, addressed the European Commission. They asked to assess whether a ban on LNG transshipment at European ports would hit the EU economy harder than Russia’s, according to Reuters.

There’s broad support but mainly questions. This package is just stitches – we’ve never done anything like this before.

Diplomats argue that they are seeking to iron out the 14th package before Hungary takes over the EU presidency in July. Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tried to block aid to Ukraine and restrictions on Moscow, they recalled.

That could thwart EU plans to impose sanctions, as their adoption requires unanimity. However, as the war drags on, the EU is running out of options to cut Russian revenues.

We were truly surprised at the resilience of the Russian economy but it has been hurt … Russia is turning into a kind of war economy.

Last month, the Russian government stated that it would seek ways to overcome what it considered to be illegal sanctions that the EU was imposing on LNG operations. Officials said any measures would have unpleasant consequences for European industry.

Read more HERE

[todays-problematic-ship]

Today's Problematic Ships are Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239

Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 are Russian-flagged oil tankers. Early on December 15, 2024, they were caught in a storm while transiting the Kerch strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

When a wave hit Volgoneft-212, the front fell off and 4000 tonnes of fuel oil spilled into sea. The tanker subsequently sank. It was apparently not built so that the front wouldn't fall, off the "centre [having been] cut out and the stern and bow [...] welded together, forming a huge seam in the middle". At least one crew member is reported to have died.

Volgoneft-239 ran aground in the same area; it is unclear how much if any oil was spilled from it. All members of its crew are reported safe.

The incidents with the Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 highlight the risks posed by the Russian shadow fleet, ships used by Russia to evade international sanctions on its oil and gas exports following its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. International observers ave accused Russia of using the shadow fleet to carry as much oil as possible no matter the consequences, these tankers not being as safe as others due to old age, poor maintenance, lack of insurance and classification, and unclear ownership.

[glamnessaaumisc]

FUN AMERICA FACTS!

The US invented the Navy. The first boat was invented by Massachusetts native John Boat, who made boats so he could bring Christopher Columbus over.

The first Pilgrim to arrive at Plymouth Rock was Scott Pilgrim, who was famous for fighting the world. This fight is commonly known as World War I.

People know about the Lincoln and the Jefferson memorials, but few know about the 42 other memorials hidden all around the United States. Can you find them all?

Oil is grown on American soil and then exported around the world so other countries can dig it up themselves. This is known as OPEC, which stands for Oil Places Everywhere, Crazy! (Huh?)

Atlanta native Joey Steele was the second President of the Soviet Union. The Russians, humiliated that they elected a capitalist pig from the West, posthumously changed his name to Joseph Stalin, but do not deny he was born in Georgia.

Hurricane, Utah is technically the only state due to a legal loophole. The only reason we recognize 50 states is because that is how it has always been.

The least populous state in America is West Dakota.

Slavery was only banned in 2015 because they discovered the 13th Amendment had a typo all that time and "slavery" was misspelled as "slovery," thus invalidating the document. You can sue the government for making you think you weren't allowed to own slaves. Try it!

Few people know about the Understates. Go there.

There is a document hidden in an abandoned steel mill in North Carolina. Find it and you will legally own Mississippi.

[warsofasoiaf]

While I believe Trump's actions towards Ukraine is atrocious considering the total incompetence of Russia is it really surrendering if they can't achieve anything. Even if we do cut aid completely what can Russia do, they lost more men then any war since World War 2 with the result of barely holding Eastern Ukraine and who knows if they are even capable of occupying it long term. Or am I being too optimistic and Russia is more formidable than it appears?

Not Ukraine. For the purposes of the U.S.'s part in the entire scenario, Trump's conduct looks to be a total surrender to Russia. Trump has been quite vocal at trying to grant Russia concessions before the negotiations even take place. Reduction in U.S. forces from Europe, reinviting Russia to the G7, talking about withdrawing sanctions, all of these would be appropriately considered negotiation levers; we will grant Russia ABC in exchange for XYZ. Instead, Trump is trying to push for them to be granted these concessions first, without actually securing any gains for himself. After all, Trump is hoping to be an energy (particularly oil and LNG) exporter - allowing Russia more latitude to sell oil worldwide gives the US a competitor and weakens the U.S. position. Hurting European relations is also bad from a trade point of view - the EU is a vastly larger market and offers more to the U.S. from a trade and scientific point of view. It's a monumentally bad move from a negotiation theory point of view, were Trump sincere in his desire to mediate a peace treaty. Trump seems to be more interesting in ensuring a Russian victory by granting their maximalist aims.

My theory is that Trump is a severe narcissist and thus sees U.S. strategic interest largely in the vein of personal fulfillment. Putin flatters him by telling him how brave he is to allow Russia to get what he wants and dangles the idea of a genuine reset in Russian-U.S. relations that Trump believes will get him into the history books (see Trump's obsession with renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and trying to secure new states - it appears that he wants to have something concrete that he can point to rather than his current legacy of being by and large a bungler in the vein of Jimmy Carter). By contrast, Zelenskyy refused to bend the knee and grant him oppo dirt, and so he wants Ukraine to be humiliated and broken to satisfy his narcissistic rage. Similarly, Trump was angered by his impeachment over Ukrainian foreign aid and thus wants Ukraine to suffer for the slight to his ego.

There's actually more to it that largely falls into my conception of the second-term Trump presidency's focus on performative strength, but that's kind of going beyond the scope of the question.

Thanks for the question, James.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[mightyflamethrower]

“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023 

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020.  In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

[lordmartiya]

On Trump cutting help to everyone but Israel and Egypt... He fucked up. As in, he literally just caused one of the things he said he would prevent, and I actually expected him to keep his word on this because doing otherwise would be immensely STUPID and successfully unite a large chunk of world, INCLUDING Israel, to be pissed at him. What I'm referring top is the impending increase in oil and fuel prices.

When Russia started its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a regime of sanctions was put in place with a precise goal: to keep Russia from making money out of its refined oil exports without removing said products from the market, thus increasing immensely the oil products worldwide including the US (a state with abundant exports, but the global market means that if oil prices go up they go up EVERYWHERE). This scheme worked, but had a very clear weak spot, namely Ukraine's increasing ability to forcibly stop the exports by targeting the pipelines, refineries (mostly on the Black Sea coast, as most of the exports were historically aimed to Europe and the initial oil fields were closer), and the so-called "shadow fleet" of poorly maintained tankers that allows the buyers to import Russian oil products and gas at higher prices than the price cap established by the sanctions (but still well below the market price).

Ukraine so far hadn't seriously tackled the Russia energy export ability because the US and Europe had a deal with them, weapons and help in exchange for not skyrocketing oil prices worldwide, a deal Ukraine mostly kept to... And then THIS IDIOT decided to give a "show of force" by cutting off help to Ukraine for ninety days. To which Ukraine, to whom defeat would mean genocide and knows better than stop fighting without solid guarantees, has already answered via an ACTUAL show of force by hitting the Ryazan Oil Refinery (the largest oil refinery in Russia, 196 km from Moscow thus making it a visible target). Twice. And at least the second attack caused secondary fires, with consequent "bonus" damage.

I don't have a car so I don't really notice this stuff unless I look at the oil pumps... But I expect gasoline and diesel prices to spike soon if they already haven't, leading a large chunk of America's allies, including Israel (oil IMPORTER nation, as they have no oil deposit) to tell this idiot to make a waiver for Ukraine YESTERDAY, all the while OPEC laughs and makes money after this long term decrease of the offer of oil products around the world.

He decided to show the world he had it by the balls, but it was the world that squeezed.

[suratan-zir]

Morning in Ukraine. Russia delivers its rich culture to us every single night.

Meanwhile, new Western-made components are found in russian-north korean missiles.

Sanctions are working as intended. Russia exports its oil and uses this money to buy western tech to use in their missiles to bomb our houses :)

I hate this stupid fucking world.

[tomorrowusa]

« [W]hat has long been evident is that Putin’s presidency has been little different from the Soviet era, in that he has made Russia a military giant but an economic dwarf. His gangster state has never been able to diversify; while the world buys Chinese cars and American software, the only thing we buy from Russia is oil, and the gradual turning away from hydrocarbons will eventually expose this as an appalling waste of a country’s potential. »

— Will Dunn at The New Statesman.

What is now tanking Russia is essentially what tanked the Soviet Union – a lopsidedly bad economy. And what barely keeps the sputtering Russian economy from totally collapsing is oil.

So Russia is now a badly run petrostate under the control of a nostalgic dictator who is trying to restore the Soviet Union in all but name – as miserable as that sounds.

One irony of Donald Trump's "drill! drill! drill!" policy (if it actually works) is that it would help undermine Russia's only major source of income.

For the Russian economy, however, Trump represents a looming risk, because however exceptional Putin believes his country to be, Russian prosperity ultimately depends on Western consumers. The reason for this is that Russia runs on oil. With most of its gas exports to Europe stopped by pipeline closures and sanctions, it has become an economy dependent on a single commodity, and while oil prices are high, money flows into the Russian current account. What scares the Russian central bank is the risk of a global financial slowdown that reduces consumer demand around the world, and therefore the price of the oil that is intrinsic to manufacturing and trade. That is exactly the world Trump is promising: a world of de-globalisation and trade barriers.

As I mentioned a few days ago, people in the West need to stop overestimating the strength of Russia. It has a couple of million people involved in its military or military industries, but they are poorly trained and not particularly motivated. Russia may have a lot of weapons, but those are almost always inferior to Western equivalents; many date back to the USSR and are even physically rusty.

At the beginning of this century Russia had the potential to become another Germany in economic terms. It had the talent and adequate infrastructure. But under Putin, Russia has become a parody of the Brezhnev-era USSR – but perhaps even worse. Putin's disaster in Ukraine makes Brezhnev's debacle in Afghanistan seem like a day at the beach. Putin has unintentionally let the world see how pitiful his military is and put on full international display the decrepit nature of Russia's economy.

[irhabiya]

gotta say the us and uk teaming up to bomb yemen to defend israel and their precious cargo ships also didnt help their defense

don't think it affects their defense that much tbf that's business as usual for the us

[mariacallous]

The agreement proposed by Donald Trump’s administration granting the U.S. access to Ukraine’s natural resources would give Washington control over the country’s mineral and oil and gas reserves, ports, and unspecified “other infrastructure,” The Telegraph reported, citing a draft of the contract.

The Trump administration is seeking 50 percent of Ukraine’s current revenues from resource extraction, as well as half the value of “all new [resource extraction] licenses issued to third parties.” Such revenues would be subject to a lien in favor of the U.S. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children,’” The Telegraph quoted a source close to the negotiations as saying.

The agreement also states that “for all future licenses, the U.S. will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals.”

The Telegraph notes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed granting the U.S. access to Ukraine’s resources back in September, hoping to attract American investment that would make another Russian invasion more difficult. Some of Ukraine’s mineral deposits lie near the front lines in the east or in Russian-occupied territory.

“He probably did not expect to be confronted with terms normally imposed on aggressor states defeated in war,” The Telegraph wrote. “They are worse than the financial penalties imposed on Germany and Japan after their defeat in 1945. […] If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty.”

[darkmaga-returns]

A Possible Turnabout in the Ukraine War

30 January 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

At least 11% of Russia’s total annual oil-refinery and storage capacity has been disabled by swarms of drones from Ukraine that have blown them up during the past two months. 11 Russian oil refineries and storage facilities, all within 1,500 miles of Ukraine, have been hit in the past 60 days, and the 73 Russian refineries that have not been hit are beyond that distance. But potentially, 20% or more of Russia’s oil could become eliminated in this way.

On January 30th, Britain’s “The i Paper” headlined “Every Russian oil refinery attacked by Ukrainian drones, mapped: Drone attacks against Russian oil facilities have tripled in the past two months”, and reported that

Drone attacks on Russian oil facilities have tripled in the past two months as Ukraine scales up a campaign against energy infrastructure deep inside the country.

In January and December, drones targeted Russian oil refineries and depots in eight separate attacks, three times more than in the previous two months, analysis of open-source material by The i Paper suggests.

Analysts say that while these strikes have previously had minimal impact on Russia’s energy sector, the recent surge is now disrupting the export of oil, which fuels Moscow’s wartime economy.

[head-post]

European Commission wants to cut LNG purchases from Russia after halting gas transit through Ukraine

The European Commission intends to reduce purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) after Russia’s pipeline gas transit through Ukraine stops on 31 December 2024.

European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson told reporters at an EU Council meeting:

We have to discuss the extension of measures to limit gas consumption and we will discuss the consequences of stopping the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine. I am also sure that we will have a good discussion on how we can further reduce the supply [to EU countries] of Russian liquefied natural gas.

Simson also emphasised that under the European Commission’s RePowerEU plan, EU countries are obliged to “completely phase out Russian gas by 2027”. The directive to ban Russian LNG supplies is planned to be introduced in April.

Read more HERE

[beardedmrbean]

German rescue teams have managed to secure towing lines to a loaded oil tanker that lost the ability to manoeuvrer in the Baltic Sea near the German island of Rügen, authorities said on Friday.

The stricken tanker Eventin, loaded with 99,000 tonnes of oil, will now be towed to an as-yet undetermined port by the emergency tug boat Bremen Fighter, according to Germany's Central Command for Maritime Emergencies (CCME).

The 274-metre-long and 48-metre-wide ship remains sealed and does not pose an immediate environmental risk or a danger to the crew on board, a spokesman for the agency told dpa.

The Eventin, which was built in 2006 and is sailing under a Panamanian flag, was en route from the Russian port of Ust-Luga to Egypt's Port Said, according to the ship tracking platform Vesselfinder.

The ship is part of Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" used to export oil despite heavy sanctions on the country, according to a list of Russian-linked vessels compiled by the environmental advocacy organization Greenpeace.

Ships in the "shadow fleet" are often outdated and in poor operating condition.

The Eventin suffered an engine failure and was drifting in the Baltic Sea before being secured, according to CCME, although the cause of the engine failure remained initially unclear.

The CCME said conditions in the Baltic Sea near where the Eventin was sailing included moderate to fresh winds, but the agency did not immediately provide additional details on the weather and swell.

A vessel from Germany's Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration, the Arkona, was also dispatched to accompany the tanker in addition to the emergency tug Bremen Fighter.

A specially trained maritime response team was also deployed to board the tanker and secure the towing connection.

The Baltic Sea is one of the most heavily travelled seas in the world. According to the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in the German town of Warnemünde (IOW), more than 2,000 ships travel through the inland sea every day.