Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

It has been a couple of years in the planning but it seems that Gazprom is gathering the wherewithal it needs to push forward the South Stream pipeline. Agreements have been signed with transit states - Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Italy - in Sochi. The pipeline, which is scheduled to be finished by 2015, would carry gas from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. As such it poses a threat to the EU sponsored Nabucco project which aspires to bring natural gas to member countries from producers in Central Asian and the Caspian without the involvement of Russia or Gazprom. Although the more rabid anti-Moscow elements within the EU will see South Stream as a serious reversal which increases dependence on Russian gas, there is a strong argument that the pipeline will increase energy security, by bypassing erratic transit states like Belarus and Ukraine, whose payment disputes with Gazprom have disrupted supplies in recent winters. In conjunction with Nord Stream , which comes into opera

Peter Lavelle has been writing lucidly on the gas row between Russia and Ukraine for some weeks now. His latest piece sets out hard commercial facts which underpin the dispute. Lavelle’s employment for Russian owned English language television station, Russia Today, has made him a target for especially vitriolic Russophobe attacks , however he is a seasoned observer of this annual wrangle and his article sets out sequentially the compelling case which Gazprom can make for its actions. Ukraine is guilty, at least in part, of attempting to exploit suspicion of Russia for its own commercial gain. Many eastern European countries inflated their economies with cheap credit when world markets were buoyant and consequently they are feeling the pain particularly acutely at the present time. Ukraine is no exception, and to add to its malaise the bottom has fallen out of the commodities market, a vicious double whammy for a country dependent on steel exports. Having previously required ba