Geopolitical pressure has been felt from east to west in energy supplies until February 2022, with the Russian Federation building more than 350 billion cubic meters of pipeline capacity per year (including Nord Stream II). After disputes with Ukraine before the war, the Russian Federation laid a series of pipelines through the north (Nord Stream I and II – 110 million cubic meters per year) and through the south (Turkish Stream – 31.5 million cubic meters per year and Blue Stream – 16 million cubic meters ), bypassing Ukraine. In 2021, the EU imported 155 million cubic meters from the Russian Federation. It should be noted that this dependence has increased over the past 20 years with the agreement of the European Union.

Geopolitical pressure in European energy Photo: Contributors.ro

But there is another dependence of the Russian Federation on the export of energy carriers, which is mostly carried out to the European Union. The existence of the Russian Federation is supported by energy exports, so until February 2022 the problem that the EU had to answer in its relations with the Russian Federation was: what is better, a destabilized state with low income from energy exports or a state that can be maintained.

The Russian Federation’s attack on Ukraine meant a serious change in the geopolitical balance and international relations with Moscow.

Until 2022, the import of energy carriers (coal, oil and derivatives, and gas) did not take into account the aggressive behavior of the Russian Federation, although the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the occupation of a large part of Dombas should have alarmed. establishment in Brussels.

More than 35% of the EU’s coal and oil import needs were covered by the Russian Federation. Gas was more than 40%.

Fig. 1 – Total reserves of natural gas in the world (source:
dvgw.de)

World gas reserves are concentrated in two areas: the Middle East and the Russian Federation. Pipelines from the Russian Federation to Europe began to be built in the 1960s and developed especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain. From Asia Minor, gas was wanted to be transported by pipelines (especially after 2000), but the Kremlin initiated open conflicts directly or through proxies, which were later frozen, to stop such alternative routes. Examples: Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Ossetia and Abkhazia, Dombas, Crimea and Syria. White Stream, Nabucco, AGRI are EU-initiated projects that were abandoned due to these frozen conflicts. In addition, through Jordan, Israel, Syria and Turkey, there were three more energy routes (gas and oil) to Europe, which started from the territory of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. And these, due to instability in the area, were abandoned.

The only one to be put into operation is TANAP (31 million cubic meters/year), which comes from Azerbaijan, passes through Georgia and Turkey, supplies Turkey and Greece, and splits into TAP (10 million cubic meters/year) and BRUA (4.4 million cubic meters/year).

Fig. 2 – TANAP pipeline (source:
bisnesalert.pl)

In 2021, gas imports to the EU were as follows:

Fig. 3 – EU imports by source and type (source:
eiu.com)

Imports from the Russian Federation have been carried out through a system of pipelines built since 1980 and which are currently part of a large network that looks like the figure below:

Fig. 4 – Russian gas pipelines supplying gas to Europe (source:
Europolitics)

If you diagram the map above, you can see that until 2021, the energy pressure of the Russian Federation on Europe is observed.

Fig. 5 – Pressure of large gas pipelines in the Russian Federation (source: Cosmin Păcuraru)

Note (from the map below) that more than 100 million cubic meters are imported into Europe annually. m of gas in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). This fact presupposes the existence of special port terminals that have gas liquefaction facilities and are connected to a network of transport pipelines. Read the rest of the article and comment on Contributors.ro