Saturday, April 25, 2015

The war of the Streams in Eurasia.

First in the midst of great fanfare was opened and put into functioning the Nord Stream by the Kremlin of relatively new in power Mr Putin which had the goal of supplying Germany and the northern europe of russian gas, in an initial counterpunch to US led eurasian energy strategy to block the nascent Russia in the form of now not so successful NABUCCO and BTC pipelines which in general had the goal of sucking off gas and oil from the Caspian out to western markets, lessening european high dependence almost to narcotics levels on russian gas (forget about UK, Scotland, Norway, Algeria, and Libya alternatives to Russia), but so far, no great success has been reached by the White House and Mr Brzezinski goal to destroy Russia. Then the turn was for Blue Stream, another move by the Kremlin to start attaching Turkey, other pivotal state in Eurasia (in the words of Brzezinksi and his geopolitical chessboard) to its sphere of influence and ostensibly rooted on a eurasian geopolitical philosophy inspired by now influential Mr Duguin to reassert russian position the eurasian landmass through every possible and attainable mean. This was another successful exercise by russian energy elites in the energy geopolitical chess it is playing against the U.S and Brussels. Then came the macro strategy of the South Stream, with even greater fanfare and with the goal of encircling the whole southern, central and eastern sides of Europe to the russian natural gas drug, against which in the middle of worrying and higher symptoms of alerts, the EU and Washington decided to start scenarios like Ukraine, Georgia, color revolutions, and so on, to blockade this other "gas stream" by the Kremlin. 




This time, and out of the economic pain first inflicted by the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration (again forget about the "reset" with the Kremlin), specially on the oil and gas sector, and tied with oil prices recent crash, prompted by saudis most of all, but not at all, this south stream effort soon had to be freezed out, due to all these reasons, and sincerely, it was very ambitious to be true. Then came the initiatives by the European Union to design a so called "Energy Union" (i wonder whatever happened and the status of the energy charter of the dying EU) to counter more painful and threatening russian moves in the energy field (sorry what sanctions said Mr Rex Tillerson i guess when EXXON teamed up with ROSNEFT in the Arctic in the heat of it). Then came the shale gas fuss coming directly from the United States which so far yes has given strength to its oil and gas industry, but with high costs, and consequently promoting more fuss and some hysteria about possible shale gas discoveries in eastern europe countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary (sadly no considerable reserves of this by CHEVRON, which left), which truth be told, gives Washington and Brussels a boomerang like counterblow to its underlying strategy of diminishing its natural gas strategy in Eurasia. 




And the most recent move by the Kremlin ( a new sanctionless seemingly Kremlin) with a stronger ruble and a renewed look, to promote the new Turkish Stream, which is no more than the continuation of the Blue Stream, aimed at Turkey and reasserting its position in the Black Sea region and consequently the whole eurasian mass. So the fanfare and the parades of energy and natural gas streams continues and with a Russia turning more east then west, and having a repentant lately Europe (which will never agree on an energy policy having so many diverse and particular energy needs based on every country energy mix and inner political dynamics) vis a vis Russia. All this fuss because of the White House intentions of blocking Russia by every mean possible. But, lets be real, NABUCCO failed, the BTC never reached levels of displacing Russia as a whole, Algeria and Libya together also wont make it to be a substitute to Russia and facing constant threats of radical islamism, ISIS, Al Qaeda, this will add up to political risks to their energy industry disrupting any chance of being an alternative to Europe. And last, but absolutely not the least, but the corolary of all, the United States in a hot debate on whether to export or not LNG to Europe, if it decides to lift the ban on this (will definitely be under a republican administration), then will have to make up and be an important player against Russia in this field, which hardly will be so. 
















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