Europe seeks new energy sources

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Brussels, Sep 17: Mounting tension between Russia and the West has reinvigorated Europe's quest for new energy sources, with analysts citing the long-stalled Nabucco gas pipeline is perhaps the best of a bad range of options.

When Russian armour entered Georgia last month it came menacingly close to transit routes for Caspian oil and gas, highlighting the frailty of European Union efforts to bypass Moscow. Energy security shot to the top of Brussels' agenda and its energy chief headed to Africa on the first of many visits to nearby potential suppliers.

"Considering the instability of some neighbouring regions and transit routes of energy, Europe needs more than ever a common energy policy," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said this week. EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs hopes to roll forward plans for gas pipes from as far afield as Nigeria, Egypt and the Caspian Sea, and backs more shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

But analysts say his hands are tied by the EU's failure to develop a unified strategy on energy, as well as political instability in Africa and the Middle East and now increasing fragility on its eastern borders and in Central Asia. "Why do politicians think we became dependent on Russian oil and gas in the first place?" said Jonathan Stern at Britain's Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. "It's not something we would have done if there had been a lot of other stuff lying around."

The EU relies on Russia for about a quarter of its gas, but has in recent years sought to cut that dependence following disputes between Moscow and transit states such as Ukraine.

To limit Moscow's stranglehold on gas, the West is backing an energy corridor from Central Asia that bypasses Russia by passing through Azerbaijan and Georgia into Turkey.

There it would link with the planned $12 billion Nabucco pipeline, which is one day hoped to carry 30 billion cubic metres (bcm) of Caspian or Middle Eastern gas annually to an Austrian hub via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.

"Georgia was considered secure, but it's been extremely fragilised as an energy transit country by this war," said Susanne Nies at France's IFRI think tank. "Russia could have destroyed the pipeline, but it didn't. My feeling is Russia wanted to 'Finlandise' Georgia -- leaving it with a certain autonomy, but always having to take Russia into account," she added.