Russia defends its gas honor

This year has been the most eventful for Russia’s energy policies since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Moscow has convinced everyone that the many years of subsidized gas prices for neighboring economies are becoming a thing of the past and that it is firmly determined to defend the position of its energy industry on the international stage.

Yet if anyone in Russia had expected support from the West, they were completely wrong. The EU lodged complaints about disrupted energy supply to Moscow, not to Kiev. Western mass media began discussing Russia’s “unreliability” as an energy supplier. All objections of the Russian authorities, which pointed out that Russia had never ever failed to honor its energy commitments, even during the Cold War, were drowned in a chorus of accusations of gas blackmail, with which the Kremlin allegedly thought to undermine the neighboring economies that were leaving its sphere of influence.
The concept of energy security proposed by Moscow exposed one of the bitterest controversies on the global energy market: misbalance between the interests of energy suppliers and consumers. Russia argues that a stable system of energy security should take the interests of both into account.

Until now, the global energy system has been based on the interests of developed countries, which are mainly energy consumer. The West is accustomed to oil and gas majors from G8 member states controlling energy production and transportation and determining the development strategy of energy markets. Yet the major energy producing centers are located in developing countries. Meanwhile, Europe’s own energy reserves are gradually running out.

The world’s most promising oil and gas provinces – the Middle East, Latin American producer countries, Russia and Central Asia – are in no way controlled by Western companies. The instability in the Middle East, the declarations of the Bolivian and Venezuelan authorities about new measures to control operations of foreign energy producers and Russia’s active efforts to build new pipelines and develop new markets show that the balance of power in the global energy industry is shifting.

RIA Novosti