Despite efforts to diversify its energy suppliers, the European Union is struggling to reduce its dependence on Russian gas as Moscow repeatedly outmaneuvers the bloc, analysts said. European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said last week that an energy cooperation deal with Iraq was at hand, with hopes gas could one day flow directly from the country to the EU once stability returns, AFP wrote.
Against the backdrop of record energy prices, reducing the EU’s dependence on Russian gas has become an obsession in the bloc’s foreign policy following disputes between Russia and Ukraine, through which most Russian supplies must transit.
The bloc has been busy since November 2006 working on an energy partnership with Azerbaijan, inking an accord with Kazakhstan, reviving relations with Libya and working on a deal with Algeria.
But so far there has been “nothing more than a political will“ and no concrete contracts, according to editorial manager of Paris-based magazine Arab Oil and Gas, Francis Perrin.
The only real progress to date was a promise earlier this month by Turkmenistan to supply the EU with 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually from 2009 through the Nabucco pipeline. Nabucco, which is supposed to supply the bloc with gas from the Caspian Sea region by 2012-2013 while bypassing Russia, lies at the heart of the EU’s diversification strategy.
But so far the project has “completely stalled“ in the absence of guarantees that there will be enough gas flowing through it, stressed analyst Susanne Nies at the Brussels branch of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI). She looked on Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s promise to feed the pipeline with a skeptical eye. “It’s a joke, he’s already sold his resources four times over to the whole world,“ Nies said. Perrin takes a more nuanced view of the situation. He said that the Turkmen promise marked “perhaps the first breaths“ of the key project, in addition to the upward revision of estimated reserves in Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field.
However, both analysts agreed that the EU is struggling to move its pawns forward while Moscow and Gazprom play a subtle game of using their financial muscle to strike back at various different points.
Russia “is negotiating with Algeria, Libya, and Nigeria about gas projects directed towards European markets even though the EU considered these countries as sources of diversification,“ Perrin said. “It’s a way of pulling the rug from under (the EU’s) feet,“ he added.
Russia has also managed to cast doubt on the need for Nabucco with its South Stream pipeline project which is supposed to bring gas from the Caucasus region to Bulgaria, passing under the Black Sea on the way.
The fact that Italy is co-developing the project shows once again that the EU “does not always speak with one voice“ to Moscow about energy,“ Nies said. The same goes for the Russian-German North Stream pipeline project which is supposed to bring Russian gas to Germany by passing underneath the Baltic Sea, much to the concern of the Baltic countries and Sweden.
Nies said that plans are being mooted to link up South Stream to Nabucco, providing the latter with a supply of gas but undermining its original purpose of bypassing Russia.
Under current estimates, by 2030 the EU will not be able to avoid becoming more dependent on Russia gas, which already in 2005 accounted for 46 percent of their imports, Nies said.

The head of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, has called for aid policies to be refocused to improve agriculture. Speaking in the week that the world woke up to the food price crisis, Lamy’s demand is radical, BBC wrote.
He said food aid needed to be increased but, more than that, improvements in agriculture needed to be put back at the heart of development spending. He said it was complex and could not be done overnight. But, he added in an interview with the BBC, the shift in emphasis was essential.
As far as development assistance is concerned, agriculture has not been the main focus of the last decade and has to be the main focus of the coming times.
Lamy said he believed that after seven years of negotiations, the Doha round, a new deal designed to make trade freer and fairer for the poorest countries, could be achieved. But the immediate reaction of a number of countries to the food price shock has been in the other direction, with France wanting higher subsidies for farmers, and a number of food-exporting countries imposing restrictions on exports.

Qatar has no plans to sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Israel, Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah Al-Attiyah has said. “We are not discussing selling gas to Israel because we are sold out“, he told reporters, TradeArabia wrote.
Israel’s Channel Two television reported on Tuesday that Attiyah had met Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and had discussed possible gas exports. Al-Attiyah confirmed that he had met Livni, who had been in Doha for a regional conference.
The minister also said Qatar was diverting LNG previously earmarked for the European and US markets to China because of more favorable returns. “It’s a good price“, Al-Attiyah said. “Find me the highest price and I will do business. There is more demand in Asia today for LNG--it’s long term.“
OPEC member Qatar is a small oil exporter, but has huge reserves of natural gas and is the world’s leading shipper of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Qatar produced around 23 million tons of LNG in 2006.

The world’s largest underground copper mine has been shut down due to a strike by subcontract workers, the state mining company Codelco said Saturday. Work at El Teniente, just south of Santiago, was stopped late Friday for security reasons after the striking workers erected barricades blocking access to the mine and threw stones at buses bringing other miners to the job.
Ricardo Alvarez, Codelco’s manager of the El Teniente mine, told Radio Cooperativa that the Friday night and Saturday morning shifts were suspended “to not put at risk the security of our workers.“ He did not say how long the suspension would last, AFP said.
El Teniente, located 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the capital, produces some 418,000 tons of copper each year. Two smaller Codelco copper mines, El Salvador and Andina, have been shut since Wednesday due to striking subcontract workers. El Salvador produced 64,000 tons last year and Andina produced 218,000 tons.
The workers maintain that Codelco has not followed through on a labor accord adopted after a strike last year.

China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), the country’s largest oil refiner, predicted its net profit to decrease by more than 50 percent in the first quarter of 2008 from a year earlier.
However, the company did not specify how much it earned in the first three months, according to its preliminary estimation, Xinhua reported.
The company said the continuous rise of crude oil price on the global market and domestic price controls led to big losses in refining business and squeezed profit margins. The company’s share price, which plunged 7.54 percent on Friday, has fallen more than 55 percent since the start of the year. Analysts said investors were pessimistic about the future profitability of oil refiners amid high crude prices.
The Ministry of Finance announced early this week a tax rebate to oil companies to limit their refining losses.
According to the ministry, Sinopec would get a rebate on imports of 500,000 tonnes of gasoline and 1.5 million tonnes of diesel from April 1 to June 30 this year.
Sinopec reported a net profit of 56.53 billion yuan (8.08 billion US dollars) in 2007, up 5.5 percent year on year.