The crisis in Crimea exacerbates the risks threatening the European energy security, but can also be an additional factor for accelerating and identifying opportunities for diminishing Europe’s energy dependence on Russian gas, the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) says in a study of the impact of the Crimean crisis on the European energy security.
In a news conference at IPN, researcher on probation at the IPP Ion Efros said the crisis in Ukraine caused concerns in the EU as to the risks related to the interruption in the supply of natural gas from Russia. Precedents were set in 2006 and 2009, when, owing to contractual disputes between the Ukrainian company Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom, a number of states in Central and Southeastern Europe remained without natural gas.
According to Ion Efros, a political decision to stop the import of gas from Russia was taken and a number of European states were disconnected from the only source of gas because they do not have liquefied petroleum gas terminals and are poorly interconnected with the market of Western Europe. “Now that a larger quantity of liquefied petroleum gas appears on the world market, the solution for the small countries is to be interconnected, besides having these terminals,” stated the researcher.
He also said that the crisis in Ukraine accelerated the discussions about the opportunity of exporting U.S shale gas to the European market. “The impact of the U.S shale gas on the European market will be felt after 2019, when the liquefied petroleum gas terminals in Europe will be used at full capacity. There should be clear price signals on the European market so that this could benefit from such U.S. exports,” noted Ion Efros.
According to him, several essential conditions should be met for exploring the convention and non-conventional gas of Ukraine, including to alleviate the situation in eastern Ukraine, to restore sovereignty over the whole international recognized territory and to collect more geological information about the feasibility of extraction of non-conventional gas in the western part of Ukraine.
