Abstract
With declining internal gas production and political instability in Ukraine likely to affect gas delivery routes, gas supply security is high on the EU’s agenda. While the EU maintained a constant support over the last decade for the development of the Southern Gas Corridor, a pipeline system linking Europe with the gas-rich regions of the Caspian Sea and the Middle East, the European Commission showed little interest for Nord Stream 2, a pipeline linking the European gas market to Russia. This chapter argues that to understand what kind of pipelines the EU supports, we need to look not only at gas availability and price arguments, but also at political and strategic considerations which triggered an EU policy of simultaneous gas routes and sources diversification.
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Notes
- 1.
EU domestic production is expected to decline from 173 bcm/year in 2013 to 92 bcm/year in 2040 (International Energy Agency 2015, p. 206).
- 2.
EU gas consumption in 2013 was 471 billion cubic metres (bcm)/year and according to the International Energy Agency will remain constant until 2040 when it is estimated at 466 bcm (International Energy Agency 2015, p. 196).
- 3.
The South Caucasus Pipeline was developed with the support of the governments of Georgia , Azerbaijan and Turkey and is a linchpin that supports the connection of Azerbaijan with the European market (interviewee 8 2014).
- 4.
- 5.
This is not to say that interest in the EU security of energy supply did not exist before the 2006–2009 crises. For instance, in 2000 the European Commission released the Green Paper “Towards a European strategy for the security of energy supply ” (European Commission 2000), but energy security efforts intensified after 2009 (Fortin 2015).
- 6.
The Energy Union was introduced in 2014 as an institutional and policy framework that aims to support additional EU integration in the energy field by generating enhanced coordination among five policy areas: supply security, an integrated energy market, energy efficiency, climate action, and research and innovation.
- 7.
These exemptions are also confirmed by Regulation (EC) No 715/2009 of 13 July 2009 on conditions for access to the natural gas transmission networks and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1775/2005 (Ministerial Council 2009).
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Bocse, AM. (2018). European Gas Supply Security: Explaining the EU External Gas Pipeline Choices. In: Raszewski, S. (eds) The International Political Economy of Oil and Gas. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62557-7_4
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