Is Gazprom's strategy political?

We do not build a pipeline in the hope that we will at some later date be able to find enough customers for the fuel it will supply; nor does it make sense to extract gas out of the ground without an assured market for it in the long term.

So I find puzzling statements that an increase in Gazprom's gas deliveries constitutes a threat to the EU's security, and that it is therefore necessary to limit them. The suggestion that Gazprom would invest billions of dollars in expensive gas export pipelines so that we could then disrupt them for political reasons looks absurd, especially in view of the substantial contribution these gas exports make to Russia's budget and the country's economy. And it is often forgotten that Russia is currently more dependent on the EU than vice versa. The EU depends for 25% of its gas consumption on Russia, yet Gazprom depends on the EU for over 70% of its export earnings. The bottom line is that Gazprom needs Europe as much as Europe needs our gas.

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Under the Commission's proposals, entirely separate - and separately-owned - undertakings would have to be established to transport gas from the supplier to the customer (whether a large industrial user or a retail distribution network), in a highly regulated environment. At the same time, the Commission is calling for a substantial increase in investment in cross-border transmission systems, so as to ensure security of supply. It is hard to see how these two demands can be reconciled: How would companies whose sole function would be to operate pipelines have the commercial interest or the financial muscle to mobilise the capital needed for major infrastructure projects if they are prohibited from having any interest in extracting and selling natural gas? Unlike the suppliers and distributors, they would have no access to the revenue generated from gas sales - the essential underpinning for financing new gas infrastructures.

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The Commission's current approach seems to favour secondary traders and speculators over the market players who actually have access to gas resources.