Diversification of Sources, Not Pipelines, is Key to European Energy Security
Journalist: Seth Myers
Type: CNAS Commentary
January 23, 2009 — As Russia’s recent gas cut off to Ukraine illustrates, Western European energy security will be concomitant with energy independence from Russia. If Western Europe is serious about achieving true energy security, rapid development of alternative energy sources, be they wind and solar power, an increase in gas imports from North Africa (which to some extent is underway) or even Iran should relations improve, or further development of nuclear power, heretofore largely anathema to the EU, will be necessary.
Following the January Russian force majeure on gas being shipped to (and thus through) the Ukraine, several alternative pipeline projects have quickly gained momentum under the auspices of promoting Western European energy security. Specifically, the Nord Stream pipeline, which would ship Russian gas directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea, has gained significant attention, and is now expected to be completed in 2011. The Russian Ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Konuzin, has stated that construction on Nord Stream’s counterpart, South Stream, which would bypass Ukraine and ship gas to Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Italy, will also be sped up. While the gas shutoff was extremely worrisome for Western Europe, it was much worse for several South European states; Bosnia suffered a severe shortage of gas, having no reserves, as temperatures dipped well below freezing, and Bulgaria, which imports some 92% of its gas from Russia via Ukraine, had zero deliveries for 15 days at the expense of some $133 million to its companies. Finally, there has been renewed interest in the proposed Nabucco pipeline, linking Azerbaijani natural gas directly to Europe via Turkey and the Balkan States.
There are several problems with this approach. First of all, it is essentially giving in to Russian demands that Ukraine be brought back into its sphere of influence. If Ukraine is bypassed by the Nord and South Stream pipelines, its importance to Western Europe is significantly diminished, and Russia is essentially free to play with its gas supplies with little worry of stirring up the hornet’s nest by outraging the EU as it did this winter. As such, it reaffirms Russia’s belief that it can essentially weaponize its energy to press its demands.
Furthermore, this approach hasn’t actually particularly diversified Western European energy sources, it has simply removed the middleman. Given that the European energy commissioner has stated that there is no evidence that that Ukraine was illegally siphoning off gas, as Russia accused it of doing, it would appear that the problem lay more with the source than with said middleman.
The Nabucco pipeline is the only proposal of the three that actually diversifies the source of European natural gas, bringing in Azerbaijan as a supplier (as opposed to Russia.) However, there are myriad geopolitical problems that need to be resolved before Nabucco can become a reality. Western Europe hoped to include several Central Asian suppliers in the Nabucco project, but these aspirations took a hit this week when Uzbekistan agreed to sell its gas to Europe via Russian pipelines. Furthermore, Turkey, through which Nabucco would run, has openly threatened to withdraw from the project if the EU continues to block talks on Turkey’s ascension to the Union. Without Turkey, the entire project becomes unwieldy (the pipeline would presumably have to be routed under the Black Sea) to the point of impossibility. Such threats serve to illustrate the dangers of long energy supply chains, regardless of the country of origin.
Project(s): Energy Security and Climate Change
