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-- 2009 Gas Crisis in Europe
2009 Gas Crisis in Europe
I've been following on the developments of this twice a day since this crisis unfolded in early January, and almost every day there's something new to report. I couldn't help but go through an episode of facepalm following this development ...
Agh ugh ... its terrible. People are freezing in sub-zero temperatures while the two idiots are fighting it out. Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine - well, they are obviously morons. Russians have lowered themselves to Ukrainian levels too. They dont give a shit about people and economy suffering from this row. And people from Bosnia to Bulgaria are in desperate situation. Its horrible. I really hope EU will finally come to its senses and agree to push with a Baltic seabed pipeline once and for all.
This dispute could be politically motivated too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7827636.stm
quote:
The EU has told Russia it is disappointed that little gas has flowed into Europe from Ukraine, despite an agreement to resume deliveries.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said only limited access was given to EU officials monitoring Russia and Ukraine's gas network.
Moscow said it had resumed gas supplies into Ukraine early on Tuesday, but Kiev was refusing to pass the gas on.
Ukraine blamed Russia for changing the delivery route.
The dispute dashed hopes of ending a row which has hit several countries' supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of Europeans without gas for a week.
See map of affected area
Moscow has been unable to resolve differences with Ukraine over debts and pricing.
Lack of trust
EU monitors confirmed a "very limited" amount of gas started flowing from the Russian pumping station at Sudzha on Tuesday morning.
Mr Barroso telephoned Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to express disappointment at the low levels of gas, as well as the apparent lack of access to dispatch centres for EU monitors.
Mr Barroso said he would also discuss the problem with the Ukrainian leadership.
Mr Medvedev said Gazprom had informed the European Commission it was unable to supply gas through Ukraine because Kiev had not opened any export pipelines.
"Ukraine didn't open the route for gas transit," he said. "If the system is closed, we can't provide gas."
Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz demanded "the immediate resumption of even supply of gas along all transit routes", saying the amount and direction of the gas had not been agreed by the two sides.
Gazprom deputy head Alexander Medvedev said Ukraine had failed to carry the gas onwards to Europe after it resumed pumping it across their border.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called on Russia to "stop the blackmail" and work out an agreement.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, at a pumping station on the Russian-Ukrainian border, says the latest twist in the dispute is symptomatic of the total lack of trust between the two countries.
Major shortages
Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine on New Year's Day, saying it would pump only enough for customers further down the pipeline.
Vladimir Putin inspects the inside of the central control room at the Gazprom headquarters in Moscow, Russia, 13 January 2009
Moscow accuses Ukraine of siphoning off gas intended for third countries
But then Moscow accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas intended for third countries.
Ukraine denied the claim, but the flow of Russian gas ceased completely on 7 January, leaving many European countries with major shortages.
In a deal reached on Monday, Russia agreed to resume supplies if Russian and EU observers were allowed to monitor their transit through Ukraine.
The move was designed to calm Russian fears that Ukraine was siphoning off gas for its own use.
The EU gets a quarter of its gas supplies from Russia - 80% of which passes through Ukraine - and more than 15 countries across central Europe have been hit by the shutdown of Russian supplies.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7826211.stm
Russian gas ignites tensions
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For a few brief hours it looked like the crisis was over.
Moscow said it had restarted the flow of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine.
But before that gas could reach its freezing customers in eastern and south-eastern Europe, the deal appeared to be off again.
Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, says Ukraine is blocking the flow of gas, preventing it from crossing the country.
Ukraine counters that the pipeline route that Russia is using to send the gas makes it technically impossible to deliver.
The row continues.
Purely commercial?
Gazprom maintains the dispute is purely commercial; many in Ukraine see a political motive too. There is no shortage of conspiracy theories.
Some believe the Kremlin is using its vast energy wealth to punish the government in Kiev for its pro-Western stance on a range of issues - from its stated desire to join Nato, to its support for Georgia during the recent conflict.
A woman warms her hands in Bulgaria during the gas shortage
Residents of some European countries have suffered during the gas cuts
Others believe Gazprom wants to strong-arm Kiev into relinquishing control of its pipeline network, thus strengthening its own grip on supply lines to Europe.
There are even those who believe that the row is an elaborate smoke-screen to disguise the fact that Russia may not be able to deliver the amount of gas it has promised.
All of these theories are dismissed in Moscow. They say it's perfectly simple: if you don't pay your bills, you get cut off.
The deal brokered by the European Union, which allows for international observers to monitor the flow of gas through Ukraine in exchange for the resumption of supplies, is an extremely fragile one.
Even if the gas does start flowing back into Europe, the agreement could yet unravel. To understand how, we need to look at how this crisis began.
Theft allegations
On New Year's Eve, Russia and Ukraine failed to reach an agreement on the price Kiev should pay Moscow for its gas in 2009.
So, on 1 January Russia stopped supplying Ukraine with gas for domestic consumption. Gas flows to Europe continued.
But then Gazprom accused the Ukrainians of siphoning off some of that gas for their own use - "stealing", they called it.
Kiev denied the allegation, but admitted it had used some of the gas for what it called "technical purposes": to power the pipeline network that transports Russian gas to Europe across its territory.
Why, they reasoned, should Ukraine use its own reserves to help Russia sell its gas further west?
Moscow argues that it pays Ukraine for the service, and that Kiev should deliver on the agreement.
But, the amount Russia pays Ukraine in transport fees has historically been directly linked to the amount Ukraine pays Russia for its gas.
Ukraine has always paid less than other European customers in return for giving Moscow favourable transport rates.
And this brings us back to New Year's Eve. The two countries have so far failed to strike a deal.
Closely monitoring
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said on Monday that her country would continue to take this "technical gas" from Europe's supply until a fresh agreement is signed. But those negotiations have stalled.
So, all eyes are now on the international monitors stationed on Ukraine's western border.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, has warned that if they discover that the volume of gas exiting Ukraine is smaller than that entering from Russia, Moscow will again reduce the flow.
For the European Union then, it is vital that Russia and Ukraine reach a longer-term agreement on the issue of gas prices.
The Ukrainian government has said it hopes the EU will participate in negotiations.
But Brussels may be reluctant to get involved in what is an ongoing and increasingly bitter dispute, one that blurs the boundaries between business and politics.
| quote: |
| Ukraine gas crisis spurs EU energy policy The gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine that has left hundreds of thousands of Europeans shivering in the winter cold is bound to accelerate plodding European Union efforts to build a common energy policy. The cut-off of Russian gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine highlighted how little progress the 27-nation EU has made in connecting national energy networks and diversifying supplies since the first such crisis three years ago. �A similar situation occurred in 2006 and we Europeans now feel guilty about not having done what we said we would do,� said an EU energy official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of his position. Unlike 2006, when the Europeans broadly sided with Ukraine�s pro-Western, democratic government, the EU has remained strictly neutral this time in what it regards as mostly a commercial dispute over gas pricing and unpaid bills. Both sides broke undertakings to Brussels on continuity of supply. The lack of transparency on contracts, the role of murky intermediaries and coalition feuding in Kiev all made it harder to sympathise with Ukraine this time, the EU official said. �The Russians were having a good gas war until they overreacted by cutting supplies to the EU. As in the war with Georgia last year, they could not resist the urge to teach former Soviet republics a lesson,� he said. Russian giant Gazprom�s demand for Ukraine to pay market prices is not unreasonable, but television images of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordering the company to turn off the taps to Europe belies talk of a purely commercial issue. Several EU states have increased gas stocks since 2006 and avoided major disruption. But Bulgaria, the poorest EU newcomer, and western Balkans states Croatia and Bosnia were caught with no stocks at all. Supplies to 18 countries have been affected. That prompted the EU to intervene. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, the EU presidency holder, persuaded Moscow and Kiev to sign a deal allowing EU monitors to check the transit of gas across Ukraine to get supplies to Europe flowing again. MUTUAL MISTRUST Progress on integrating the European gas market by linking up national pipeline systems has been very slow, partly due to mutual mistrust among EU nations, as well as divergent business interests and political differences on relations with Moscow. Member states still do not share information with each other about the price their energy companies pay Gazprom for gas. The executive European Commission and the EU Council secretariat have been struggling to collate such data since 2006. �We preach transparency but we do not practice it among ourselves,� the EU energy official said. Poland has led a chorus of new members from central and eastern Europe calling for energy �solidarity� within the EU to reduce the former Soviet satellites� dependency on Moscow, which provides a quarter of the EU�s gas. But Germany, Europe�s biggest gas consumer, opposes any emergency EU pooling arrangement for gas stocks, arguing that this is a commercial matter for utility companies. Berlin is keen to manage its energy relationship with Russia without the involvement of Brussels. It resisted any EU involvement in the Ukraine dispute until the leaders of Bulgaria and Croatia appealed personally to Chancellor Angela Merkel. EU officials say the crisis should spur European leaders at a March summit to put political momentum and public money behind plans to build cross-border energy interconnectors in Europe. They may also agree on minimum requirements for gas storage as the EU has for national oil stocks. And they will likely give higher priority to diversifying gas suppliers, supply routes and delivery mechanisms in particular to develop liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. Among suppliers, the EU is eyeing Qatar and Nigeria for LNG as well as Algeria, Norway, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Central Asian countries for piped gas. Russia is using the crisis to underline the cost for its NordStream and South Stream projects to carry Russian gas directly to European consumers via pipelines under the Baltic and Black seas, bypassing Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. The dispute will also add political weight to the Nabucco project, backed by both the EU and the United States, to pipe Caspian and Middle East gas to central Europe via Turkey, but there are doubts about finding enough gas to fill the pipeline. None of these projects offers an early solution, given the long lead times and high cost. EU officials say they are not an �either/or�. There will be enough demand and enough gas to justify all three extra pipelines, they say. In the shorter term, the capacity of existing pipelines can be expanded. But the main quick gains for European gas security would come from linking national networks into a single market and improving energy efficiency, especially in central Europe. |
Since I'm living in a country that's hit by the gas crisis, I can pretty much say that most people blame Ukraine for this whole mess, and they rightly do so. I really don't know what they hope to accomplish, I doubt the gas they stole will pay off for the losses in relations with Russia and the whole of Europe. They really seem to be going the path of Georgia here, forgetting that the drunkard Yeltsin is no longer the one in charge. Besides, they have a large russian population that only waits for Putin's signal to start rioting...
On the other hand, Putin played this one really good. If he shut the pipes a couple of months ago, nobody would really care. He waited for the extreme cold to come in order to prove his two points. First one is that Ukraine is a dishonest country that steals from others. The second one is that he can get EU by its balls every time he wishes. In a way, nice display of power and probably a reminder of the threat of sanctions that EU made after the Georgian war.
Yeah, no offense, but historically Ukraine has been a back-stabbing nation. I am not talking about their whole people - dont get me wrong - but their political elite, their nationalism and back-stabbing, lies and stealing on a political and national level.
Most of their nationalistic celebrations and historic achievements are nothing but events when they back-stabbed others. Like when Ukrainians in Volyn, from 1920s to 1940s participated in genocidal campaign killing thousands of Poles in pushing them out, in Western parts of areas which have been predominantly Polish for God knows how long. When they betrayed Jews in WW2, when they betrayed Russians and allied with Nazis (only later to realize that was a mistake), when Khrushchev (Ukrainian) stole Crimea from Russia and gave it to Ukraine as a "gift". When Ukrainian Bolsheviks got Russian Odessa, and eastern parts of the country in return for "support" of communism during the Revolution of 1917.
And recently Ukrainian "brothers" helped arm Georgian forces to attack Russian citizens AND peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
I have no respect for that country of Ukraine. Poor people of that country remain hostages to the idiotic politics of their government, their chaotic political life and system, instability and economic uncertainty. Further splitting apart the close Slavic brother nation-peoples. Shame, terrible shame.
Oh, and dont get me started on Holodomor. Ukraine feels special, claiming genocide against Ukrainian people in 1930s by Stalin - while in reality it was a class war, against both ETHIC Ukrainians AND Russians, to take control of land and grain.
The same way as millions of ethnic Russians perished from starvation and collectivization within Russia itself between 1917-1941, for the purpose of seizing grain and land - not for extermination of an ethnic group. But Ukrainians on the other hand feel special and want their case to be granted as genocide.
quote:
1918-21 - Policy of "war communism" enunciated, with the state taking control of the whole economy; millions of peasants in the Don region starve to death as the army confiscates grain for its own needs and the needs of urban dwellers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1112551.stm
Only took a quick search.
And according to Wikipedia with regards to Holodomor itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
quote:
As of March 2008, the parliament of Ukraine and many[15] governments of other countries have recognized the actions of the Soviet government as an act of genocide. The joint declaration at the United Nations in 2003 has defined the famine as the result of cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and other nationalities in the USSR. On 23 October 2008 the European Parliament adopted a resolution[16] that recognized the Holodomor as a crime against humanity.[17]
Its obvious Ukrainians weren't the only ones who died from this terrible crime perpetrated by the evil Bolsheviks and madman Stalin. My family and lineage suffered big time from communists. And we're Russian. We feel angry about the Holodomor movement that thinks and recognized that its just Ukraine and Ukrainians who were the targets, while my grand-grandfather in Kuban' region died from hunger, and his brothers were seized and murdered by the Soviets.
This gas crisis shows nothing but how stupid the Russian elite is. All they do is trying to show off their fake power to EU.
Yes, finally it appears - hopefully it is final - that Russia has bulged and given in to a compromise in this situation, because its obvious that Ukraine wasnt gonna settle for anything less than a Russian discount.
Whether this crisis was politically motivated or not - unlikely - its done. You dont see Russia cutting off gas to Baltic states or Poland - Russia has much beef with those states. This appears to me more of an economical rather than political case - especially considering that oil prices are dropping and Russia can ill afford giving everybody a discount on gas. In any case - its obvious now that Russia giving Ukraine and Belarus subsidized energy since the early 1990s have proven to be a big mistake. Now without that clause, it will simply not be able to transit gas to Europe.
Now its clear that EU's energy security can only be achieved through pipelines being built to bypass these troublesome states.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7834796.stm
Gas to flow after deal in Moscow
quote:
The Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers have struck a deal at talks in Moscow to resume Russian natural gas exports to Europe via Ukraine shortly.
Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko emerged to brief reporters, ending a day of delicate talks.
Under the deal, Ukraine will start paying for Russian gas at the much-higher European prices from next year.
The dispute between Moscow and Kiev has disrupted gas supplies to much of Europe for almost two weeks.
See map of affected area
"In the very near future, transit - and the Ukrainian side has assured us to this effect - will resume," said Mr Putin, speaking alongside his Ukrainian counterpart on Russian TV.
Mrs Tymoshenko said that the two countries' energy companies, Gazprom and Naftohaz, had been instructed to draw up the relevant contracts by Monday.
"Immediately after all the documents on the transit and purchase of gas are signed, all the routes for gas transit and gas supplies to Europe will be restored," she said.
"I believe today has been a fruitful day... Mutual understanding has been found."
EU pressure
The parties were under pressure from Brussels to reach a deal this weekend.
European Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger had said the Moscow talks offered "the last and best chance for Russia and Ukraine to demonstrate they are serious about resolving this dispute".
"The gas must flow," he added. "We will regard this period as a test case for judging whether or not they are credible partners."
EU states import a quarter of their gas from Russia and 80% of supplies come via Ukraine. Almost 20 countries in Europe have been affected by the dispute.
Russia switched off the gas this month, accusing Ukraine firstly of failing to pay for its own supply, then later of stealing gas meant for other countries.
Some central and east European states have been reduced to rationing gas, while others have been seeking alternatives to the Ukrainian pipelines.
The gas dispute created the EU's worst ever energy crisis, the BBC's Richard Galpin reports from Moscow.
Ukrainian divisions
At his news conference with Mrs Tymoshenko, Mr Putin said that discounts for both Russian gas supplied to Ukraine and the transit rate charged by Kiev would apply for the current year.
"We agreed that in 2009 our Ukrainian partners will have a discount of 20% on condition that the preferential tariff for piping Russian gas to European consumers through Ukraine in 2009 remains in force and that the price for piping will be the price of 2008," he said.
"We also agreed that from 1 January 2010 we will entirely move to price and tariff formation fully in accordance with European standards without any exemptions or discounts as regards both the transit and the price of gas."
European-level prices for gas supplies will mean, at current rates, a jump from $179.5 per 1,000 cubic metres to $450 for Ukraine.
On the eve of the talks, sharp divisions emerged between Ukraine's president and prime minister, political foes in a fragile coalition government.
Mr Yushchenko's office insisted the Moscow talks must combine gas supplies to Ukraine with transit supplies to Europe in "a single package".
Mrs Tymoshenko for her part said: "The Ukrainian government does not link the issue of concluding an agreement on [Russian] gas supplies to Ukraine with the issue of resuming gas transit to Europe."
There was no immediate reaction to Saturday night's deal from Mr Yushchenko.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted an emergency gas summit in Moscow on Saturday but EU leaders heeded a call by the Czech Republic, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, to stay away in order for Brussels to speak with one voice at the meeting.
America is lucky that Canada is such a great neighbor.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by jerZ07002 America is lucky that Canada is such a great neighbor. |
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