U.S., Russia engage in Cold War-like ‘chess match’ over energy
It’s a Cold War reprise, but not for military supremacy, and the points on the map aren’t troop deployments, tank battalions and missile silos. Rather, pipelines, ports and power plants are the weapons of what could prove a generation-defining conflict between the U.S. and Russia over how Europe heats and electrifies its homes.
Success, U.S. officials say, would mean finally “liberating” former Soviet states and satellites from decades of economic bullying by Moscow.
To that end, Washington is helping set up new natural gas pipelines and terminals in a region that depends on Russia for more than 70 percent of its energy needs. It is pushing American companies’ bids for nuclear plants and fracking exploration in Europe.
Yet as the U.S. makes headway, the Kremlin is fighting back, warning neighboring governments about the consequences of looking westward for fuel. Russia is trying to outmaneuver the U.S. on nuclear bids, buy up pipeline infrastructure across Europe and control not only how its vast energy reserves move westward, but what European governments can do with those supplies afterward.
“It’s a chess match,” said Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s special envoy for international energy affairs, as he pored over a map of Europe dotted with existing and proposed pipeline routes.
Although the U.S. has pressed its European partners for decades to find new oil, gas, coal and nuclear sources, the crisis in Ukraine has upped the ante. Russia’s takeover of Crimea last year and continued support for rebels in a brutal civil war in Ukraine has changed Europe’s mindset about relying so heavily on Russian energy.
Last month, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Bulgaria to push for a new gas spur and to promote an American company’s bid to build a new nuclear plant. Bulgaria relies on Russia for 85 percent of its gas and all of its nuclear power. The prices, among the highest for NATO countries, are a concern within the alliance, which prides itself on winning the Cold War.
“The battle was won,” Kerry told staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Sofia. “And here we are today in 2015, and Russia is still trying to impose on people its will.”
In November, Vice President Joe Biden visited Romania, another vulnerable country, and Turkey, Europe’s bridge to resource-rich Central Asia, to press the case.
Victoria Nuland, America’s top diplomat for Europe, and energy envoy Hochstein have spent much of the past few months working with Europe on a coordinated energy strategy. Their message: Failure now will only invite more Russian pressure.
While episodes of Russia shutting off the energy spigots to its neighbors have raised alarms, persistent infighting among European governments and energy companies has hampered diversification efforts across the continent.
But, increasingly, there now is action in addition to diversity talk.
With U.S. support, Lithuania and soon Poland will be importing liquefied natural gas from Norway, Qatar and potentially the United States. New pipelines will enable Central and Eastern European countries to send fuel from west to east and north to south.
And in a couple of years, a southern corridor should be taking fuel from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and into Europe, bypassing Russia.
Those advances combined with other moving parts — a liquefied gas plant off the Croatian coast, a Bulgaria-Romania network connection, links into Serbia and Hungary, and greater energy integration as far afield as Spain and France — will mean Europeans can increasingly trade energy among themselves, pooling their fuel sources and weakening Russia’s grip.
Hochstein said the U.S. would like to see a 20 percent slice cut out of Russia’s current share of the Eastern European gas market by 2020, considering that a major step forward.
While Western Europe provides the funding, the U.S. is giving technology and political support.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/us-russia-engage-cold-war-like-chess-match-energy/
Just posting this because it's about energy, and a lot of you on the forum are experts on the energy sector. I've read pieces of this before, about how Poland is building a large LNG port and they already get shipments in from Qatar. So the plan is for more of that in the future, and LNG shipped from the US, and then some pipeline too coming up from the middle east.
Angela Merkel is pushing energy diversity more, lately, and was talking about that the other day in Hungary.
John Kerry, last month in Bulgaria:
“The battle was won,” Kerry told staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Sofia. “And here we are today in 2015, and Russia is still trying to impose on people its will.”
Thoughts?
