Ukraine And Europe’s Natural Gas

Is Putin’s Ukraine invasion about fossil fuels? The continent has grown over-reliant on Russian gas – but Putin knows he is vulnerable to Europe cleaning up its energy sector

Fiona Harvey, 24 February 2022 (UK Guardian)

“…Europe is dependent on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas supplies, and despite the expansion of renewable energy over the past two decades, that dependency is increasing as countries shift to gas, away from dirtier coal. Germany is particularly vulnerable, as it has shut down nearly all of its nuclear power stations and aims to eliminate coal by 2030…[Gazprom’s $11bn Nord Stream 2 from Russia across the Baltic to Germany] was announced in 2015. Construction on the 1,200km pipeline was completed last year, but no gas has yet flowed and its future is now in doubt as Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz dramatically halted approval for the project on Tuesday…

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Vladimir Putin has a long history of territorial ambitions in former Soviet nations…[T]he Ukraine crisis is not a war over resources, but it has many implications for resource use…[In] the longer term, as Europe weans itself off gas and pursues net zero emissions, the value of this political weapon will wane rapidly…Any further reductions of Russian gas supply to Europe would have severe consequences, for Europe but also for Russia itself…

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Russia makes little or no attempt to capture methane from its oil and gas drilling…Russia could provide an invaluable service to the rest of the world by plugging these leaks – reducing methane globally by a third by 2030…Putin believes he has to the largest extent sanction-proofed Russia, but Russia earns hundreds of millions of dollars a day from sales of oil and refined products, and more from sales of gas and minerals…The crisis in Ukraine shows that some fossil fuel producers at least may not want to give up without a struggle…” click here for more

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