In the longer term, the geostrategic balance between Europe and Russia hinges on energy. You have on the table in the United States the issue of: Are you going to export hydrocarbons or not? And the Europeans have on their table: are we going to stop our silliness about shutting down existing sources of production of energy – nuclear energy in Germany — and preventing ourselves from exploring new sources of energy like unconventional (shale) gas. This, I understand, will be a significant element of the EU-US summit in Brussels this week. --Francois Heisbourg, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 23 March 2014
Europe should push ahead with controversial fracking schemes to reduce dependence on Russian gas amid talks on harder sanctions, William Hague has argued. Britain’s Foreign Secretary said that European shale gas could help provide energy security as he insisted nations should not “run scared” of Moscow’s “bullying behaviour” in Ukraine. --Sonia Elks,
The Sunday Times, 23 March 2014
Russia's seizure of Crimea drives home the urgent need for the UK to develop more domestic sources of energy, such as shale gas and nuclear power, Britain’s energy minister has warned. “We have to develop more home grown energy like shale,” Mr Fallon said. --Andrew Critchlow,
The Daily Telegraph, 24 March 2014
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that imports of U.S. shale gas could eventually be an option for European countries seeking to diversify their energy sources but the United States must first build the infrastructure to export. "Many people think that this could be one component, if the United States decided to export shale gas," she told reporters after European Union leaders discussed how to diversify energy sources away from reliance on Russian oil and gas. --
Reuters, 21 March 2014
The use of Russian gas is the only economically viable solution to deal with the problem of intermittency. The intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar plants is balanced with electricity from methane stores that are filled by Putin’s people. But thus a new risk emerges. Germany’s security is already compromised by dependence on Russian gas. If, as planned, Germany shuts down its still running nuclear power plants and relies fully on wind and solar power, dependence on Russia will only increase further – and reduce the security of supply. This in turn restricts Germany’s foreign-policy capability even further. Do the Germans really know what they are doing? --Hans-Werner Sinn,
WirtschaftsWoche, 17 March 2014
Suddenly energy security, rather than climate change, is dominating Europe’s energy agenda. At last week’s summit, the European Commission was told find a way, within three months, to cut dependence on Russian gas — and to put on hold targets for carbon dioxide emission reduction, which were due to be ready for a global summit in September in Paris. European governments are waking up to the fact that subsidising electricity from intermittent wind farms has failed to prevent a ballooning dependence on imports to keep our homes warm. As William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, wrote yesterday, Europe now needs to invest in terminals and pipelines to import gas from places other than Russia, as well as develop home-grown shale gas. If only we had done so five years ago. --Matt Ridley,
The Times, 24 March 2014
It’s the greens in suits, rather than kaftans, that have done the most to stop the shale gas revolution here, by demanding that all drillers jump through gold-plated regulatory hoops. Their goal, they freely admit in private, is not to ban fracking but to delay it to commercial death. --Matt Ridley,
The Times, 24 March 2014
The energy potential buried deep under the North Sea is vast almost beyond comprehension. There is an estimated 3 trillion tonnes of coal according to Harry Bradbury who plans to extract gas from it – enough to keep the country’s lights on for generations to come. --
Natural Gas Europe, 21 March 2014
It makes sense for the EU to strengthen its negotiating position by diversifying its sources of supply. In the short run, EU countries can use more coal and less gas in their electricity generation. The EU can also increase imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). EU nations should embrace domestic shale gas. It is cheap and local. It is important that the EU doesn’t get in the way of its exploitation. Meanwhile, countries such as Germany should abandon their knee-jerk aversion to nuclear energy. --Hugo Dixon,
Reuters, 24 March 2014
2006 and 2009 should have been serious wake-up calls for the Europeans, and the lessons should by now be deeply embedded in the EU’s energy policies. Instead the main efforts have focused on the internal energy market and the climate change package. Whilst it is true that European politicians have tried to portray both of these as enhancing security, they are poor substitutes for a serious energy security policy. Lots of solar panels and wind farms are at least European energy sources. But again these add very little to security, and arguably in some cases they make matters worse because they are intermittent. --Dieter Helm,
Energy Futures Network Paper, 17 March 2014
