Or, If Your Cyrillic Is Not Up To The Job
"Strybayuchyy Dzhek Flesh Tse Haz Haz Haz"
Which, of course - obviously! - is Ukrainian for "Jumping Jack Flash It's A Gaz Gaz Gaz"
For Lo! we are into the second part of Conrad's inimitable analysis of the travails and torments of Ruffia's largest (current) employer, namely Gazprom. This business is getting the old one-two from the steel fist, whilst the iron fist is giving Rosneft the old three-four. Black eyes and broken teeth abound. Before we get to the main course I have a couple of entrées for you. Art!
Gaze upon 'Gaz', or, more accurately nowadays since they transmogrified the title, 'Campingaz', which is a French company whom we won't bear any ill-will towards because they can't help it, who cornered the camping market from 1949 onwards. What you see here are containers of mixed butane and propane under sufficient pressure to render the gas unto a liquid. These provided a convenient and relatively safe source of portable heat for folks venturing into the great outdoors. Art!
Your Humble Scribe has used this unit in the past, and jolly handy it was too, as long as one kept a sharp eye out for potential accidents. Art!
Talking of dangerous incendiary occurrences, here is a Ruffian GAZ truck, as was used by their military. The name comes from an acronym: Gorkovsky Avtomobiliniy Zavod, or Gorky's Wagon Works. I use the past tense here because they are now becoming rare, since they have been sent off to get scragged in Ukraine by the thousand. Art!
Yes, Dougal, you could boil a kettle over that open flame, and no, Dougal, you are not supposed to be able to do that.
ANYWAY back to Gazprom. Yesteryon we displayed data explaining how very, very badly Gazza is doing financially in the wake of the Special Idiotic Operation, with a $12 billion drop in 2023 from profit to a loss of $7 billion. One reason Ruffian oligarchs have been emulating Plummet Airlines in their behaviour near open windows is that their pie is shrinking dramatically, so there's no longer enough to go around. Art!
This is the Export HQ of Gazze in Saint Petersburg. It was constructed in the interior of an historic building, designed by a British architectural firm, and opened in 2016 to much fanfare. 600 staff worked there.
That picture to starboard is from the pre-opening portfolio, but it might as well be the HQ as of today, because the total number of staff now employed there is -
Ten.
Thus this building is one Gazzi is looking to sell in order to raise capital, because they seem to have realised that the EU gas market is deader than dynamited dodo discotheques. Art!
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| Mister Freud would heartily approve |
We briefly graced you with a picture of this building yesteryon. It's the Lakhta Centre, commissioned by Gazprom and constructed at a cost of $1.77 billion, finally being completed in 2019.
However - a word you knew was coming - Gazzo is now making noises about selling it, because they need the money. If your balance sheet is in the red, you need to raise capital and reduce expenditure. Art!
In a foreshadowing of things to come, the Lakhta HQ is looking to sack 1,600 management staff in order to reduce their wage bill, a chop of 40%. Whilst this is still a drop in the ocean versus their total of 498,000 employees, it does denote a trend likely to be continued in future, because why employ people to sit around and do nothing? when you can fire them and then send
Those lay-off figures are from 13th January 2025, and as yet Conrad cannot find any information about any other planned redundancies since then, which might mean nothing is being contemplated, or it's all being kept hush-hush to avoid making Putinpot look bad. Art!
One of the most disturbing caricatures of Putinpot I've seen, and possible artistic interpretation of how he ended up looking so bad. Art!
This is one of the Teuton Liquid Natural Gas plants, of which they built six. What I want to show here is that the basic infrastructure to allow EU nations to deal with LNG not pipeline gas has already been budgeted and planned and created. Thus the first major hurdle of dealing with gas blackmail has been overcome, and the rolling overheads will be a fraction of the initial outlay. Briefly put, there is no reason for the EU not to continue to use LNG; the other side of this coin is that Ruffian gas exports are now surplus to requirements.
Oooops.
The Rollercoaster Ride Continues!
You wouldn't expect a car to be able to duplicate the gravity-defying feats to be found in an amusement theme park, but Tesla says "Hold my beer!"
I did mention, with considerable dudgeon, that the share price for Elong Tusk's pet vehicle project had climbed upwards again, after plunging rapidly, despite the Orange Land Whale acting like a used-car pimp on Muskie's behalf.
Well, it seems the Big Dipper component of Tesla's vehicular DNA has been activated again. Art!
This is the market position as at close of business Wednesday, so it'll be interesting to see what it looks like by the time markets close for the weekend. Conrad suspects the euphemism for this performance is 'volatile', meaning staid business investors don't like it and cross fingers and toes that it settles down. Or else!
Conrad The Cynical Is Not Surprised
We have, in the recent past, done an item on 'Whisky Cask Investments' because they keep cropping up on my feeds and won't go away. Slightly more grounded than 'Log-counting software' and 'Portable Lumber Mills' of the distant past, yet not what Conrad is going to invest in.
So, what is this that I espied just now on the BBC News website? Art!
Another Way To Spend Time Gainlessly
Conrad is far too fond of playing solo Mahjongg, which is not the game played with tiles akin to an Asian version of poker, but a tile-matching version where you attempt to empty the board. Art!
This one looks better than the one I normally play and has more scoring options but it is EXACTLY as time-wasting as the previous version.
Yes I am a very sad man.
Elsewhere In South Canada -
Forgive me if I continue, in my unlovely style, of kicking a film when it's down, and out for the count, too, seemingly. Yes, we are still mocking 'Snow White' Vulnavia, because it's such easy-cheesy low-hanging fruit. One suspects that Disney would have quietly shelved this film and taken a tax loss on it, if they hadn't allowed Rachel Zegler to go braying louder and freer than Shreck's Donkey about it, for years.
One of the positives about it is that it gives critics like 'RK Outpost' an abundant supply of ammunition. Art!
Blimey, Ryan, leaven the mixture a bit, can't you!
Your Humble Scribe can provide a bit more bad news in hard data form. Art!
Conrad can tell what you're thinking "O gosh look at those figures". Please bear in mind that those figures are for close of business as at Wednesday, and have been up since Thursday last week. SW was projected to take $50 million at the box office on it's Saturday opening and Sunday follow-on, both domestically and internationally.
Yet here we are three days later and still short of that target.
Is this important? Heck yes! Don't forget the rule of 50%, which is the maximum return a studio gets from box office receipts, meaning SW has cleared $46 million. Also remember that box office receipts are always front-loaded, meaning that the longer as film has been released, the less the take becomes on each successive day. Art!
Also remember that Ryan very perceptively noted that, for other Disney live action remakes, the International box office has been multiples of the Domestic, helping to either minimise their losses or help make a profit. No such succour for SW, it seems.
Conrad predicts it will get pulled from cinemas as soon as decently possible and then pimped to the heavens on Disney+.
Or, the rumours are true, and Disney is a money-laundering operation.
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