Carnegie Europe: On Energy Security, Eastern Europe Is Often Its Own Worst Enemy
Russia is having a good run in Eastern Europe.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, clinched a major energy deal with Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian conservative prime minister, who visited Moscow two weeks ago. The Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom agreed to help build a nuclear power plant in Paks, Hungary. It will also provide €10 billion ($13.7 billion) in loans.
In Poland, Italian energy company ENI announced that it was abandoning attempts to extract shale gas. North American firms ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, and Talisman Energy already pulled out several months ago.
Meanwhile, U.S. energy company Chevron decided to quit neighboring Lithuania even though it had won a tender to explore shale gas in the Baltic state.
And in Ukraine, Putin persuaded President Viktor Yanukovych not to sign an association agreement with the EU by promising to reduce the price of Russian energy supplies to Ukraine by a third and providing loans amounting to €10.9 billion ($15 billion).
All four cases have one thing in common: the absence of a coherent, strategic EU policy on energy security in Eastern Europe. Despite EU attempts to promote energy security through diversifying sources and building storage facilities and interconnectors, Eastern Europe is still hampered by unclear legislation and political differences vis-à-vis Russia. MORE