According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, the United States is discussing with allies and partners the possibility of supplying Europe with additional volumes of gas from alternative sources in case, as they believe, “escalation of the situation in Ukraine”
“We are working to find additional volumes of non-Russian natural gas from North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and also the United States,” Psaki said, noting that the United States is already in talks “with a number of countries and partners.”
“In addition,” the spokeswoman added, “we are working with major LNG buyers and suppliers to ensure that existing contracts and storage are flexible and that [gas] can be redirected to Europe.”
Berlin opposes
At the same time, Washington is considering blockading Russian energy supplies to Europe altogether. This was reported by the German tabloid Bild. The plan is said to have been developed by CIA chief William Burns and presented in Berlin.
However, Germany opposed. According to Bloomberg, Berlin is seeking exceptions for the energy sector in the event of blocking the access of Russian banks to settlements in dollars as part of the sanctions against Russia that the West threatens to impose as the situation in Ukraine escalates. According to one of the documents cited by the agency, Germany is concerned that, without exceptions for the energy sector, supplies to Europe may be at risk. And without cheap pipeline gas from Russia, German industry will be uncompetitive.
Bloomberg sources also said that other major Western European countries have similar views. One of the officials said that based on discussions, an exemption for the energy sector is likely to be part of the final package of sanctions agreed with the US, which will be imposed in the event of an escalation in Ukraine.
Qatar is not profitable
As for Washington’s attempts to find alternative suppliers for gas supplies to Europe in order to deprive Russia of income from the sale of this raw material, experts believe that such plans are simply impossible to implement. So it is reported that the United States began negotiations on this matter with Qatar. However, Qatar is unlikely to become an alternative supplier of its LNG to Europe. This was stated to NEWS.ru by a diplomatic source in the emirate, commenting on the initiative of the administration of President Joe Biden to attract Doha for gas supplies to the European continent.
According to the source, Qatar is unlikely to want to anger Russia or “any other country currently involved in this complex equation” at the expense of potential gas supplies to the EU, even if it is a US request.
And the US Bloomberg agency believes that Qatar will not be able to scale up gas exports to Europe at all if Gazprom restricts supplies in response to hypothetical new sanctions. According to agency analysts, the emirate’s production capacity is already fully loaded – most of its cargo is sent to Asia under long-term contracts. They cannot be violated, Bloomberg points out. According to him, the supplier also does not want to jeopardize relations with Asian partners, even if it will benefit the US and Europe. Qatar Energy sells part of the LNG on the spot market, from where it is mainly shipped to Europe. But these volumes are too small to be of great importance.
There are no hopes for Norway, which is the second largest supplier of blue fuel in Germany.
“We meet Germany’s gas needs by a third, but our pipelines are already running at full capacity. We do not have reserves with which we could make up the deficit,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stere said in response to a request from Germany to increase supplies. In addition, it is known that the deposits in this country are already on the verge of depletion.
Old song about the main
“This is not the first time that the United States has embarked on a strategic ‘capture’ of allies, contributing to the ‘separation’ of European and Russian energy,” writes the Chinese newspaper Huangqiu Ribao.
“During the Cold War, they hindered the construction of ventilation ducts and technical cooperation between Italy, Austria, West Germany and other European countries and the Soviet Union. During the Donald Trump era, the US continued to threaten European countries to stop Nord Stream-2 and imposed numerous sanctions. In 2019, Washington also convinced Qatar to actively supply LNG to Europe in order to reduce European gas purchases from Russia. This time around, the United States hopes to “small measures” to hinder EU-Russia energy cooperation by “acting as a bridge” between its allies”.
However, given the objective conditions of the gas industry, it will be very difficult for America to control Russia with gas, the publication notes, indicating that the transportation of natural gas should be based on an appropriate large-scale infrastructure.
At the same time, interregional transportation has a high cost and is associated with numerous technical problems.
Australia has declared its readiness to help Europe with the reimbursement of Russian gas. According to the Australian newspaper, the country’s Minister of Resources, Keith Pitt, made a corresponding proposal. However, we are again talking about LNG, which is an order of magnitude more expensive than pipeline gas.
Utopian plans
As you know, more and more natural gas is transported around the world on LNG tankers, and the degree of internationalization of the natural gas market is gradually increasing. The share of short-term transactions in the global LNG market increased from 16% in 2009 to 40% in 2020.
“However, due to the problem of the cost of compressing LNG, it is difficult to achieve the same level as for the supply and price of natural gas through pipelines, and it can only play an additional role in the volumes of gas transported to various countries,” concludes Huangqiu Ribao.
“On the eve of the new year, the media wrote that a wave of tankers was moving to Europe, that the US had redirected all its volumes from Asia to replace Russia. And what did we end up seeing? As soon as the balance between Asian and European prices changed again, some of these tankers turned around and left for Asia,” writes Igor Yushkov, a leading analyst at the National Energy Security Fund, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.
US plans to weaken Russia’s position in the European energy market with the help of LNG are utopian, said Dong Yifan, a researcher at the Institute of European Studies of the Chinese Academy of Contemporary International Relations.
There is no alternative to Russian gas in the foreseeable future, when Europe plans to switch to green energy.
“In October, the German Energy Agency and the analytical company Boston Consulting (on behalf of the Federal Association of German Industry) updated their research on the energy transition in connection with the adoption of the climate protection law in 2021,” writes the Zuddeutscher Zeitung.
“According to their conclusion, after the potential achievement of climate neutrality by 2045, there will not be a total phase-out of gas, its use will only be severely limited. And Russian gas is no exception. Gas will continue to be used for heating old buildings that have not been reconstructed, as well as for generating electricity in the event of a shortage of capacities at wind, solar and other alternative installations.”
Want to eliminate a competitor
Probably, the United States understands this too, but they continue to intensively circulate horror stories about the “energy blockade” of Russia, the replacement of its pipeline gas with LNG from alternative sources. But all this is being done as part of the information war fanned by Washington, which has nothing to do with the real practice of hydrocarbon trading.
Today, Europe cannot do without gas from Russia.
But the most important thing is different. Washington is again trying to eliminate its main competitor from the European gas market. Calling for an “energy blockade” and announcing the search for alternative sources of gas for Europe, the United States refers to a fictional “Russian invasion” of Ukraine, which will stop transit.
It is clear that Russia is not going to attack anyone, and therefore, in fact, there is no real threat to stop Russian gas supplies to Europe.
Vladimir Malyshev, Century