Will Europe be able to defeat Russia in the energy war?
Coal, oil and gas have become weapons that Russia uses against the West, writes Habertürk. According to the author of the article, Europe could have avoided this, but for many years it preferred not to do anything. Will it be able to abandon Russian energy resources now?
Kurshad Zorlu
One of the most important front lines of the Ukrainian conflict is the trade of energy resources between Russia and Europe. From the point of view of Europe, this is a dependency that is difficult to give up, and from the Russian side, it is an income that needs to be maintained and a field for strategic moves.
Coal, oil, natural gas and many mineral resources eventually became a tool used by Russia against the West.
Especially natural gas... Europe imports 40% of the gas consumed from Russia, and the latter earns about $450 million a day from these sales.
Let's remember how Russia built this process.
Since the first Soviet gas supply to Austria in 1967, the energy issue has generally been based on mutual interest. Russia needed to sell gas, and Europe needed to buy it... The energy scenario, which in the period after the USSR could be based on a certain level of trust, turned into an environment, while Russia, through Gazprom, became involved in the war.
Russia, accusing NATO of approaching its own borders, has in a sense reached the heart of Europe with its own pipelines! She was moving step by step towards asymmetric dependence.
With the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia pushed this goal even further. At that time, Europe's dependence on its natural gas was 30%, whereas just before the current military conflict it increased to 45%. With this course of events, Germany became the most surrounded country. From now on, it accounted for 50% of all gas imports... Although Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 implied the possibility of pragmatic superiority for Germany, the current conflict has undermined this move by Russia.
And Gazprom made the most significant step in 2021, ensuring an insufficient level of gas filling capacities of the EU countries. At the end of 2021, the volume of gas in storage was at its lowest level. According to the International Energy Agency, the gap formed in Europe's gas storage facilities was half due to this strategy of Gazprom. In this regard, one event should be recalled – Trump's speech in Warsaw in July 2017. "And we are ready to provide you with access to alternative energy sources, so that Poland and its neighbors will no longer be hostages of the only supplier of energy resources (Russia)," he said, expressing the need for a rapid increase in reserves.
Against the background of insufficient storage capacity, excessive consumption of China after the epidemic, as well as the resulting atmosphere of panic, prices have risen record high. At this stage, even in the event of a reduction in gas supplies, Russia's revenues would remain stable. At the same time, the volume of Russian oil imported by the EU decreased by 20%, coal – by 40%, and gas imports increased. And Russia has doubled its revenues from the sale of fossil fuels to the EU in two months of fighting in Ukraine.
It is obvious that from 2014 until the start of the current military operation, the EU has not done anything significant to prevent this!
The decarbonization policy, Germany's rejection of nuclear power plants, and the closure of the Groningen field in the Netherlands, which is one of the largest gas fields in Europe, also had an impact.
The energy game between Europe and Russia, although it reached such a scale, proceeded in conditions of controlled tension. For some time, the sanctions did not affect this area. Russia continued deliveries, but imposed a payment requirement in rubles. In this situation, the sixth package of EU sanctions appeared on the agenda. Immediately before that, Russia suspended gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland, because they did not pay in rubles.
In this regard, EU leaders propose to stop importing oil from Russia (whose share is 27%) within six months. In addition, it is also planned to reduce natural gas imports by 66% this year and completely get rid of dependence by 2027.
It is not easy to implement this decision, which should be adopted unanimously. Some countries, in particular Hungary and Slovakia, oppose it on the grounds that there is no alternative to Russian gas in the short term. At the same time, the new steps taken by Poland and Lithuania to ensure the security of energy supply partly serve as an example for other European countries.
Of course, from Russia's point of view, the EU's departure from dependence on imports will be undesirable... It is very likely that it will not be able to supply China with gas sold to Europe (23 countries) via pipelines. Where, besides the EU, can these 140 billion cubic meters of gas go?
Considering the issue from this angle, we can say that Russia has begun to face defensive moves that it should have faced since 2014. It is clear that she still has a strong position... And if Ukraine continues to resist in this military conflict, the European Union will be able to gain time in order to find a new alternative to gas.
