Russia's gas king taunts crumbling Europe over China pipeline coup
Russia's gas king taunts crumbling Europe over China pipeline coup - News from The Telegraph
Hardly news to us because we’ve been banging on about this for a few years now, but to see the scary state of European energy supplies laid bare by a Russian with an axe to grind might be a wake up call for many.
Britain’s increasing dependence on imported gas has always been a high risk strategy and exposed to faster growing Asian economies being able to pay more for the same gas. Russia’s gloating comes hard on the heels of a spectacular deal to supply China with Russian gas. It is increasingly clear that EU threats to impose energy sanctions on Russia are empty; the EU needs Russian gas more than Russia needs the EU. They’ll easily find other buyers.
It is inevitable that the UK is going to need to import an increasing amount of gas as North Sea production continues to dwindle, and those supplies are going to cost a lot more. Sharp annual increases in energy costs will be a fact of life and businesses which install their own capacity now, and fix the price of their electricity at around half the current grid rate, for the next twenty five years, will be at a competitive advantage.