Energy disarmament

Europe needs to coordinate infrastructure and policy to prevent the withholding of energy supply becoming a useful weapon

Has the “energy weapon” of the 1970s


Europe cannot afford to let this history make it complacent. In the wake of the repeated Russia-Ukraine dispute, Europe must react with the same decisiveness to diversify its energy supplies that it demonstrated in the 1970s in meeting Opec’s challenge. As with the Middle Eastern countries, only bitter experience will teach Russia that secure energy supplies are in everyone’s interest. The Kremlin will learn that lesson only if Europe designs, adopts and sticks to an energy strategy that lessens its dependence on Russian supplies and builds its own common foreign policy on energy security, as recommended by the European parliament’s 2007 report.

Gas is arguably more vulnerable than oil to unforeseen supply interruptions. Oil is reasonably easy to trade globally in maritime tankers, whereas in most gas markets the fixed pipeline between gas field and gas burner locks producers and consumers in an exclusive embrace. One task facing Europe now is to make that Russian bear hug less exclusive, which will require a co-ordinated and sustained effort between the EU’s member states and their neighbours on the question of external energy security.

Guardian