Weapons: Passing Gas

Archives



April 29,
2008:
Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, Russia has interrupted natural gas
supplies 55 times in order to apply political pressure on its neighbors. It was
three decades ago that Russia began building huge gas pipelines towards Western
Europe, with the intention of exporting the gas for hard cash. Western Europe
was assured that Russia would never interrupt the supply for political reasons.
Russia has natural gas reserves of 47 trillion cubic meters, currently worth
about $6 billion (and rising). Each year, it exports 160 billion cubic meters
of that to Western Europe. Gas and oil exports account for 90 percent of
Russian exports. It would be economic suicide to cut off those lucrative
shipments to Western Europe, just to apply some political pressure. But, hey, that's
what makes politics work. European nations are seeking to find more politically
reliable sources of natural gas, and are not having much success. Thus natural
gas is becoming one of the more potent weapons in the Russian arsenal.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contribute. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   contribute   Close