This is a serious blow to the European “alternative” pipeline project, Nabucco, which purpose is to connect Turkey to Austria, in order to create a new import of methan gas coming from Caucasus, Caspian Sea and Middle-East, so to elude the russian routes; moreover, the Nabucco project is still up in the air, having been postponed several times.  

The situation is more complex than it appears: the energy russian giant, in fact, with a “power” of 63 yearly billions cubic meters of exported gas, is able to satisfy over than 30% of the whole European continent natural gas request reaching, in some countries like Poland or Bulgary, peaks of more than 80%. 

The European Commission has immediately replied, asking to Hungary, Bulgary, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia and Austria, among the South Stream european partners, to “review” the agreements concluded with the russian company inasmuch they would be in violation of the free market and of the community anti-trust laws (Gazprom would be gas producer, supplier and owner of the pipelines).  Beyond strictly juridical and economic matters, it is clear that the EU is trying on one hand to defend its (future) geo-strategic platform and, on the other hand, to limit an additional russian penetration inside the european borders; for this reason, EU is rallying the troops, tying the future of its eastern partners to that of the Union architecture and playing the card of the Third European Energy Package, a complex of regulations in contrast with the russian interests with the purpose of modify the current normative asset concerning the european energy market.

If this plan is possible, we don’t know, but it is sure that the delays in the construction of the Nabucco pipeline won’t facilitate this issue: if the Nabucco will be definitively built, it will really lead Europe to a major energetic indipendence by the exploitation of huge natural gas fields in Turkmenistan and Azerbajan, far away from the Muscovite orbit, but the misunderstandigs about the supplies and the continuos postponement of its own construction casts a dark and depressing shadow on the future of this whole european industry.

What is confirmed, instead, is a simple fact linked to the will of those countries asked for consultation by Brussels to go on with the South Stream project, considered by many capitals as a “national priority project”; this is a solution that not only will guarantee to countries like Hungary a first supply of natural gas starting from as early as 2017, but it will also assure the certainty to attract high-qualified investments, equal to different dozens of billions of euro.

Therefore, even on the energy plan, Europe doesn’t seem able to find a sharable guide-line; nonetheless, that of energy is a match which the EU is called to play in first person, otherwise its cooperative asset will be call into question.

How can is it possible to talk about integration if a matter so important like the energetic policy remains, for such a long time, without an answer?

Without energy there can’t be development, without development there can’t be cooperation and without cooperation there never can be integration.

(source image Quartz.com)

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