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West Seeks To End Putin’s Stranglehold Over Energy

Britain Pushing G7 For Shale Gas And Nuclear To Loosen Russia’s Energy Grip



The British government is going to use the G7 meeting in May to urge ministers to focus on diversifying domestic energy networks, such as through shale gas and nuclear power, to pry away Russia’s grip on supplies. UK energy Secretary Ed Davey said that Whitehall will tell G7 ministers that Russia’s consistent use of energy as a geo-political tool holds too many countries to ransom and by ploughing time and money into domestic resources, this will loosen the superpower’s stranglehold over supplies. --Lianna Brinded, International Business Times, 22 April 2014
The Western powers are scrambling to bolster defences against a halt in Russian gas supplies after the Kremlin tightened the energy noose on Ukraine, and paramilitary actions in eastern Ukraine increased the risk of a full-blown sanctions war. US Vice-President Joe Biden warned that Russia will pay a very high price unless the Kremlin withdraws troops massing on the Ukrainian border. “We will not allow this to become an open-ended process. Time is short,” he said in Kiev. Two key US senators have already called for sanctions on large Russian banks, mining companies and energy groups, including the state gas monopoly Gazprom. Any such move would freeze gas deliveries to the EU, since few European banks would risk defying US regulators by handling Gazprom transactions. --Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 23 April 2014 Angela Merkel has been urged to end Germany’s moratorium on fracking as part of a drive to reduce dependency on Russian gas. The call to allow “demonstration projects” in hydraulic fracturing came from Günther Oettinger, who is in charge of the EU’s energy directorate. Mr Oettinger, a senior member of Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said that fracking should be part of the German response to Russia’s use of energy as a political weapon. --David Charter, The Times, 23 April 2014

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Britain is to lead an international effort to stop Russia from using its vast natural energy supplies to hold the world to ransom. As President Putin continues to stoke fears of civil war in Ukraine, energy ministers are preparing to weaken his power by reducing reliance on Russian gas. Ministers from the G7 countries — Britain, US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy — are expected to agree to accelerate the development of alternative gas supplies, increase storage, build more electricity interconnectors and even restart mothballed nuclear reactors. --Ben Webster, The Times, 22 April 2014 Ministers want to give energy companies the right to run shale gas pipelines under private land, Whitehall sources have confirmed. The planned move – aimed at kick-starting the fracking industry – will be included in the Queen’s Speech as part of an Infrastructure Bill. The companies will still need planning permission to drill for shale gas. But they will be able to install pipes to transport the gas under private land without fear of breaking trespass laws. --BBC News, 23 April 2014 Shale resources have been part of the Earth's "natural environment" for many thousands of years but have become usable natural resources only in the last six years, because of the human resourcefulness that led to breakthroughs in drilling and extraction technologies. Mother Nature provides us with an almost infinite abundance of natural resources but without any "instruction manuals" that tell us how to process them into useable products that improve our lives and raise our standard of living. On Earth Day, let's not forget to celebrate and appreciate the human resources — knowledge, ingenuity, know-how, creativity, entrepreneurship, and imagination, i.e. the "instruction manuals" — that transform otherwise unusable resources like shale hydrocarbons into energy treasures that will power our economy for generations to come. --Mark J Perry, Investor’s Business Daily, 22 April 2014 The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today. Although we speak loosely of 'production,' man neither creates nor destroys matter, but only transforms it — and the knowledge of how to make these transformations is a key economic factor. --Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions


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