The Oil Drum

In his second blog entry, Andris Piebalgs moves the focus to European energy security. A few choice excerpts for those who want to have a more spontaneous debate:

Europe is currently importing half of their energy needs, and according to most of the studies, our dependency may grow to 70%. We are running out of fossil fuels and our energy needs grow. This makes Europe terribly vulnerable. As Commissioner responsible for security of supply I often wondered, where are we going to get all that energy from? (my emphasis)

The EU is already a leader in renewable energy sources and we have taken a commitment to go further with a mandatory target of 20% of our final consumption by 2020......

Grin! Given the nature of much of the discussion here, dare I mention that I was up in Indianapolis at an event that has a relation to NASCAR vehicles (duck!) Thought not!

More seriously as I traveled, I noted that the USA Today is reporting that the bad weather in Central Europe is continuing. As a result for the sixth day Gazprom was unable to meet its international market commitments.  And, with sabotage to the pipelines, supplies to Georgia and Armenia remain cut-off. The Turkmenistan President is in Moscow possibly to talk about Gazprom taking over Turkmen gas. The BBC reports that:

some experts doubt that Turkmenistan has the gas, or the pumping capacity, to cope with what is expected to be a 30% increase in demand for its gas from Ukraine.

In fact some think that Turkmen gas may be at peak levels.

For the short term Gazprom is sending some gas to Georgia via Azerbaijan but if the cold weather persists, as is anticipated, it may get more complicated.  Iran, for example, is also willing to supply Georgia.  This may be needed since the Russian supply is providing only 35% of that which is needed.