Eurasian Natural Gas: Significance and Recent Developments

Ericson, Richard E.

doi:10.2747/1539-7216.53.5.615

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The Russian government and its overall economy are dependent on the extraction and transport of natural resources, and with the world economy dependent on carbon fuels, Russia is in an important position, which complements China's increasing energy needs (Economy 2011;Ericson 2012;Chow 2011). This being said, more than 50% of Russia's government revenue at the state level is from oil and gas (EIA 2013, 1).…”

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confidence: 96%

The geopolitics of Russia's annexation of Crimea: narratives, identity, silences, and energy

Biersack

O’Lear

2014

Eurasian Geography and Economics

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This article analyzes official Russian government narratives for the annexation of Crimea and connects these narratives of identity and territory to the energy implications and narratives of Black Sea resources and the recent 30-year gas agreement with China. We argue that the events of Crimea's annexation in the "west" signal a Russian shift "eastward." With the occurrence of the Euromaidan protest movement and Ukraine's president, fleeing from power, a pro-European Union government came to power in Kyiv. The Russian government reacted by deploying unmarked troops to support the holding of a secessionist referendum for the peninsula's population. The Russian government incorporated Crimea by engaging in a sophisticated effort, through nonmilitary and military means, to promulgate narratives justifying Russia's annexation of Crimea. The Russian government appealed to Russia's geopolitical and historical imaginations of Crimea. There were two other, no less important, factors for annexing Crimea: control of the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Crimea and new maritime territorial claims that encompassed much of Ukraine's Black Sea energy potential and existing facilities. These two impetuses form the silent connection between Crimea, energy, and the Black Sea Fleet, that are then linked to the subsequent gas deal with China. The important gas agreement follows the discursive arc begun in Crimea, which appealed to the historical past, whereas economic developments in Asia and Russia's energy power status discursively represent Russia's future. Viewing Russia's geopolitical narratives in the context of historical and geographical dilemmas shows the layered relationships informing identity, territory, and resources.Silence itself-the thing one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers-is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies. (Foucault 1978, 27)

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confidence: 96%

The geopolitics of Russia's annexation of Crimea: narratives, identity, silences, and energy

Biersack

O’Lear

2014

Eurasian Geography and Economics

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“…The consequences of the natural gas exports have been tremendous as many of the oil and natural gas reserves, and large parts of the transport system have become part of new states as depicted on Figure 12 (Yafimava, 2011, pp. 30-31;Ericson, 2012) . This has been an economic loss for Russia, but also a source of security and military challenge as the Russian influence on these states has weakened.…”

Section: Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Zhiznin, 2007) Figure 12. Russian natural gas pipelines, existing (2011) and planned Source: Ericson (2012) The pipeline infrastructure inherited from Soviet times determined the dependencies of the newly emerged states, many of them relied on Russian pipelines to be able to reach the export markets (e.g., Turkmen gas was sold via Russia and Ukraine to Central Europe). Therefore, the development of oil and gas reserves on the Caspian Sea and the diversification of export routes have been common goals for the new sovereign states bordering the Caspian Sea: Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.…”

Section: Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural gas pipeline politics in and around the European Union Modelling – based assessment of Russian and European strategies

Takácsné Tóth

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In the last 20 years, the growing reliance of the EU on gas imports increased the vulnerability of the energy system to supply shocks. Natural gas is difficult to substitute in the short term due to the high share of gas in space heating and electricity generation in most of the EU Member States. Russia has been supplying gas to the EU since the 1970s and reached a 35% market share by 2020. There has always been some cautiousness with ’red gas’ during the Sovjet era, but trust in Russian gas supplies was first time seriously questioned by Western European policymakers in January 2009. At that time transit via Ukraine was halted for two weeks because of a dispute over gas transit between Russia and Ukraine. Since that time the EU and Russia developed parallel strategies to mitigate this transit risk. This dissertation focuses on the power politics surrounding the natural gas pipeline projects planned and implemented between 2009-2020 with a special focus on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which became a symbolic project of power politics. The dissertation applies an interdisciplinary approach and uses geopolitical, legal and economic arguments to explain the pipeline strategies and their implementation. In the analytical chapters, the main analytical tool is gas market modelling to compare different pipeline and policy options from the European welfare and the Russian profit point of view. The dissertation aims to answer the following questions: Question 1.: How would Russian Gazprom use the Ukrainian infrastructure under different combinations of availability of the new routes, if it were a profit-maximizing actor? Question 2.: How successful was the EU’s pipeline strategy in infrastructure planning, in selecting and implementing the right projects of common interests between 2013-2020 to improve the resilience of the EU gas markets to supply shocks and growing market power of upstream supplies? Question 3.: How did the European and the Russian pipeline strategies influence each other under a worsening geopolitical EURussia relationship between 2009-2020? The timeframe of the dissertation is 2009-2020, which is the era when the security of supply-related legislation forming was dominating the EU legislative agenda in the natural gas sector. The geographical coverage of the analysis is the territory of the European Union plus the Energy Community Contracting Parties, Russia, and Turkey The novelty of the dissertation is the advanced use of gas market modelling on geopolitical scenarios to inform policymakers of the cost and the socio-economic benefits of certain policy decisions. The dissertation was based on three modelling chapters connected by the analytical framework of Russian and European natural gas pipeline investment developments between 2009-2020. The scenarios applied reflected the latest state of play at the time of the respective analysis. The analytical framework and the methodology applied proved to be useful tools to address high-level questions on pipeline politics. The changing environment was reflected in changing input data and scenario definition and the analytical approach can be applied to new questions in the future, like the full substitution of Russian gas supplies to Europe. - The dissertation contributes to previous academic research done in the field of regulation of natural monopolies especially in the field of energy networks by assessing with market modelling tools the use of different pipeline routes and marketing strategies of Russia. (Chapter Error! Reference source not found.) - Modelling applied in the dissertation contributes to the understanding of how changing parameters of the long-term contracts (annual contract quantity, flexibility, and especially change in delivery point and capacity bookings along the route) impact wholesale gas prices of the European countries and the welfare of the citizens. The dissertation adds to the modelling literature the Russian perspective, by applying profit maximization to the Russian sales strategy when selling spot volumes to the European market complementary to long-term contract deliveries. (Chapter 5) - The dissertation also contributes to the development of a methodological sound modelling-based cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure investment applied to the European gas PCI projects. (Chapters Error! Reference source not found. and Error! Reference source not found.) Thereby the competitive nature of the European and the Russian pipeline strategy is captured which is new in the literature.

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Playing the Game or Changing the Rules of the Game: Chinese and European Approaches to Energy Cooperation in Central Eurasia

Gatev

2018

East Asian Community Rev

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Eurasian Natural Gas: Significance and Recent Developments

Cited by 6 publications

References 12 publications

The geopolitics of Russia's annexation of Crimea: narratives, identity, silences, and energy

The geopolitics of Russia's annexation of Crimea: narratives, identity, silences, and energy

Natural gas pipeline politics in and around the European Union Modelling – based assessment of Russian and European strategies

Playing the Game or Changing the Rules of the Game: Chinese and European Approaches to Energy Cooperation in Central Eurasia

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