Gas protection – can Europe live without Russian gas?

European leaders will have to take into account the factors of Russian gas, whatever the EU reaction to referendum on Crimea’s status. In 2013, Gazprom sold 138 billion cubic meters of gas to the EU states, takes almost 29% of the market and showed the best result since before the crisis of 2008, despite weak demand and regulatory obstacles. For now, the EU can neither ignore its dependence on Russia, nor get rid of it. But, having political will, it can minimize purchases of Russian gas in the future.

The market is overfilled

“European gas market is overfilled, the demand is much less than the minimum levels of taking on long-term contracts,” – member of OMV’s Board of Directors, Hans-Peter Floren stated in January, summing the up results of 2013. According to him, the gas demand in Europe will stagnate at best, so the terms of the long-term contracts must be reviewed and suppliers must decrease prices to recover the competitiveness of gas. According to International energy agency, after a kind of recovery in 2010, the gas demand in Europe fell by 7.5% in 2011 and by 3.5% more in 2012. According to the Kommersant calculations on basis of the European Statistics Committee’s operational information, in 2013 the gas demand in Europe grew by almost 1% to 480 billion cubic meters, but a half of the increase was caused by consumption in Croatia, which jointed the EU in the middle of the year and wasn’t taken into account previously.