Energy-hungry EU Seeks New Oil And Gas Suppliers

European Union officials Monday vowed to forge stronger links with suppliers of vitally-needed oil and gas resources in a bid to ease the bloc’s current dependence on energy-rich, but increasingly assertive, Russia.

Seeking to blunt what wary EU policymakers view as Russia’s use of its energy resources as a “political tool,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a meeting of EU energy experts he was determined to build a global network of energy partners.
Also, with overall world energy consumption set to increase by well over 50 percent over the next 25 years, Europe would be increasingly be competing with other nations – the United States, China and India – for energy resources, he warned.

“The scramble for territory of the past may be replaced by a scramble for energy,” EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana warned, adding: “Although energy markets are increasingly global, much of the world’s gas and oil reserves lie in unstable and often undemocratic parts of the world.”

The EU would increasingly have to deal with governments “whose interests are different from our own and who do not necessarily share our values,” he said.

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