Yamal Pipeline Redux, Part I
When Russia turned off the gas to Ukraine this week, Western Europe felt the chill – not the one you get from an abnormally cold winter, but the one you get when an old nightmare returns. In 1982, the Reagan administration halted the export of gas pipeline equipment to European companies, putting the brakes on Western Europe’s plan to tie its energy future to the USSR. The “allies” denounced the U.S. in terms that easily match the current anti-Bush venom and declared that the Russians would NEVER hold up European energy for political purposes. Until now.
When Russia turned off the gas to Ukraine this week, Western Europe felt the chill – not the one you get from an abnormally cold winter, but the one you get when an old nightmare returns. In 1982, the Reagan administration halted the export of gas pipeline equipment to European companies, putting the brakes on Western Europe’s plan to tie its energy future to the USSR. The “allies” denounced the U.S. in terms that easily match the current anti-Bush venom and declared that the Russians would NEVER hold up European energy for political purposes. Until now.
President Reagan hung tough, forcing a two-year delay in the first part of the pipeline and a ten-year delay in the second. In the meantime, world oil and gas prices fell and the Europeans and Japanese curtailed their credit relations with the USSR based in part on changed gas revenue projections. The combination deepened the Soviet economic crisis and eventually the USSR collapsed and spun off its colonial holdings.
Western Europe and the U.S. were happy then to treat Russia as if it had been one of the victims of Communism rather than its architect. Today, Russia chairs the G-8 and Europe gets 25 percent of its energy from Russia – 80 percent of that goes through the Ukrainian pipeline. But now Russia wants to own that pipeline and others that run through former Soviet states and is using the price of natural gas to the pipeline countries as leverage. The Guardian notes that Belarus caved last week, resulting in a Russian promise “of gas at $47 per 1,000 cubic meters, compared with the $230 Gazprom demands from Ukraine. Even Georgia, with its anti-Kremlin president… has been careful to avoid slamming the door on Russian participation. Its price this year is $110.”
Ukraine, on the other hand, refused Moscow’s “offer” to buy into the state-owned pipeline while it pursues an overtly and determinedly anti-Russian foreign policy. Hence Russia’s decision to quadruple the price of gas for Ukraine (and then to cut off the supply) before the Ukrainian elections. Insisting the cutoff is economic, Russia declared it would send the requisite amount through the pipeline to Europe. Any decline in European supply, Russia said, should be blamed on Ukraine siphoning it off.
As Ukraine and Russia entered new talks on gas prices today (with Russia turning up the tap a little bit), European media is hysterical about the idea that Russia would play politics with energy. Le Monde called it “the first declaration of war in the 21st Century” (huh?). London’s Independent declared, “Vladimir Putin intends to destabilize Russia’s western neighbor in the hope of unseating its leader.” Rome’s La Repubblica called the dispute a “threat to the entire region.” Berlingske Tidende of Copenhagen wrote, “The current demonstration of power over the Ukraine is insupportable, because it so baldly demonstrates the iron fist of the Kremlin when it comes to foreign policy.”
Really? They were expecting, maybe, that Russia had – in the face of all available evidence – become a non-belligerent as regards the behavior of its former colonies? Expecting the Ukraine could have a cost-free anti-Russian foreign policy? Expecting that their energy supply could be untouched by the politics of the region? Why?