Русская версияGeorgia's strategic role as a pipeline transit country, run by a
US-backed leadership that Moscow detests, formed the backdrop to
the conflict that erupted in early August.
After Russian troops handed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
a humiliating battlefield defeat, the region's fragility and
Moscow's clout are more obvious than ever.
Monday's emergency EU
summit on Georgia will not change that in the short term.
The European Union will now be less likely to use "volatile transit
routes" that bypass Russia and tend toward "solid and stable"
energy ties with Moscow, said Ivailo Vesselinov, an economist at
investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort in London.
"The signs point to the EU trying to cooperate more with Russia,
rather than less," he said.
Diversion effort may be postponed
EU and US efforts to get around Russia are focused on Nabucco, a
7.9-billion-euro ($11.6-billion) pipeline slated to run Caspian gas
to central and western Europe from Georgia via Turkey and Bulgaria
to Austria.
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The former Soviet states are often wary of Russia's motives
Nabucco's Vienna-based head office says the 3,300-kilometer
(2,050-mile) project remains on track, with construction to begin
in 2010 and gas to start flowing in 2013.
Analysts are not so sure.
"I don't think it's dead, but it will be postponed... because of
the political uncertainties and the military intervention," said
Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the DIW economic think tank in
Berlin. "That's a major difficulty for the project."
A pipeline deal signed last year by Georgia, Poland, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Lithuania to pump Caspian Sea oil to western Europe
also seems more uncertain, Vesselinov said.
Russia is the EU's single largest energy source, supplying 28
percent of the bloc's oil and gas, according to the European
Commission.
Some ex-communist countries, like the Baltics or Slovakia, depend
on Russia for all of their gas. Key nations in the old EU, notably
Germany, have long worked to expand energy ties with Russia,
seeking cooperation rather than confrontation.
Looking for alternatives
In parallel, the search for alternatives was on. The
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, involving British Petroleum,
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, was launched in the late 1990s with
EU and US backing, a response to the perceived need to lessen
dependence on Russia.
US President George W Bush even appointed a family friend as
special envoy for Eurasian energy, Brussels-based diplomat C Boyden
Gray.
But while analysts in Washington have tended to see the Russian
invasion of Georgia as a strategic defeat for US interests,
Europeans have taken a more muted view.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who heads the
shareholder committee of a Russian-German pipeline consortium,
firmly took Russia's side.
"Only dreamers can run after the notion of a western Europe
independent of Russian oil and gas," he told Der Spiegel magazine.
"Creating mutual dependence also creates mutual security."
Russian energy splits Europe
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The Baltic Sea pipeline will increase Russia's share of Germany's
gas supply
Nord Stream, the company Schroeder is involved with, is building a
pipeline under the Baltic Sea to move Russian gas to Germany. The
project will raise Russia's share of Germany's gas supply from
about 40 percent to 50 percent, Kemfert said.
Moscow also is countering Nabucco with the South Stream project,
designed to route Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria and
Serbia, with one leg ending at the same Austrian terminal as
Nabucco and the other in Italy.
Nord Stream has created fissures in the EU similar to the east-west
split over the Iraq war: Poland and the Baltics, generally
suspicious of Russian intentions, have raised environmental
concerns about the undersea pipeline.
Fighting in Georgia appears to have trumped those
worries.
"Our German partners must stop viewing the Baltic Sea pipeline as a
purely economic project. They should understand that Russia can use
the gas conduit to keep Europe in check," Poland's
daily said in an editorial.
Russia's muscle-flexing may yet spur Europe's push for other energy
sources, including wind and solar energy -- already a European
strength -- and liquefied natural gas transported in tankers.
"For sure, the energy debate will start now," Kemfert said.
(Deutsche Welle)
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