Europe’s relations with Russia are close to their lowest point in decades. Yet now President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to open the spigot on Russia’s copious natural gas -- or not -- may be what determines how cold many Europeans get this winter. That’s despite the European Union’s vow a decade ago to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, to avoid this kind of vulnerability. It’s been a contentious issue within the economic bloc and has caused rifts with the United States. Now Putin is dangling the possibility of a surge in gas exports, but possibly with strings attached.
A supply crunch in October provided a vivid insight into Europe’s reliance on gas flows from Russia. Gas storage tanks in the EU were at their lowest seasonal level in more than a decade, after longer-than-usual maintenance at Norwegian fields and Russia rebuilding its own inventories. Benchmark gas prices traded as high as 162 euros ($188) per megawatt-hour on Oct. 6, compared with about 20 euros at the start of the year. It was against this background that Nord Stream 2, a new Russian pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany, was completed in September.
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November 10, 2021 at 12:00PM
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How Europe's Gas Supplies Are So Dependent on Putin's Russia - Bloomberg
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