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On the subject of the "South Stream " project , the EU is in conflict with Gazprom , AKA the Russian government
the official bitching is the EU rules on energy transport ,
a serie of ruling decided to make the distribution of energy independent of production , this was against some of the major national electricity companies and gas conglomerates ,Electricite de France , Eon and others fought long and hard to keep near monopoly in their patch but lost in the end , then it was decided that gas pipeline had to conform too
a pipeline had to be open to any supplier who could feed into it to deliver the gas of any buyer
this was not a problem for the trans Adriatic pipe , it get it's gas from one place only Algeria
Gazprom was mightily wroth , the Europeans wanted to be able to buy Turkmen , Kazak or Azeri gas and send it to Europe
at the price they bought it plus transport costs
so far the deal is the gas from the "stans" is swapped on the Russian market and the Europeans are getting Russian gas at Russian prices
Gasprom was afraid of a cut price open market with daily price fluctuations were they would be undercut by some corrupt local big man
they do not like spot market as being a thief playground and like ten or twenty years contracts ,
their argument is that it give them stability to invest .
as far as they can see , they build the pipe , they pay for the pipe , it's their pipe and they are not subject to Europe dictate
The text ... one of them anyway
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ ... 25&from=ENThe real reason seems to be the quasi open dirty trick warfare between the "West" and Russia
leading the fight in the European corner is the German Mr Günther Oettinger ,
like most EU commissioner , a failed politician who was buddled out of national politic to the cemetery of political ambition
his only claim to fame is to have lost his wife to a Porsche salesman