The EU summit opening in Brussels on March 23 has energy security as its key topic. Relations with Russia are center stage. Russia is the EU's most important energy supplier, and also controls key transit routes from Central Asia. However, its reliability is increasingly being called into question.  

Brussels is trying -- so far unsuccessfully -- to get Russia to ratify its Energy Charter setting specific international legal standards that Moscow must meet to make it possible for EU companies to invest in Russia.

Equally unsuccessfully, Brussels is trying to get Moscow to include a protocol in the Energy Charter that would allow EU companies access to Russian pipelines in order to use them to buy oil and gas directly from Central Asia.

In Search Of Realistic Alternatives

An increasing number of politicians and analysts in the EU hold the view that if Russia is an obstacle, the EU should look elsewhere. Michael Emerson, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Studies, wrote in a recent opinion piece in the weekly "European Voice" that Russia seeks to "exercise unconstrained monopoly power where it can," and has grossly abused it.

Speaking to RFE/RL, Emerson said Russian authorities make no secret of pursuing Russia's national interest in running the state-owned gas giant Gazprom. He said the only way for the EU to force Russia to respect multilateral, market rules is to show "credible" intent to look for alternatives.

"The main leverage is the credibility of [the EU's] diversification options elsewhere, which concerns the gas supplies by pipeline [from] the Caspian and the Middle East, it concerns gas -- LNG [liquid natural gas] -- reception facilities, and it goes on then into the broader agenda of energy diversification, clean coal, nuclear [energy], renewables, and so on and so forth," he said.

Emerson said the EU must make some key decisions soon. He said one such is whether to build the mooted "Nabucco" pipeline from Turkey to Southeastern Europe. A linked decision will be from where to draw the gas supplies -- whether from Central Asia across the Caspian Sea and via the Caucasus, or from Russia through its Blue Stream pipeline to Turkey. However, Emerson noted that the capacity of Nabucco would come nowhere close to rivaling the trunk lines entering Europe via Ukraine.

Just Business

Julia Montanaro-Jankovski, a researcher with the European Policy Center, told RFE/RL that the fear of Russia is exaggerated and there is no evidence of a malicious political intent in recent Russian energy decisions.

"I think there's two different types of things, in the sense that it's clear that Putin effectively wants to use energy, or is using energy, as a tool to place Russia more clearly on an international stage of politics," she said. "This is why in the [Group of Eight] G8 summit that's the major priority, this is why Putin [on the] whole through energy and through other things has really tried to regain the prestige of Russia on the international arena."

Montanaro-Jankovski said the spat with Ukraine was a business conflict and that Moscow was not trying to use energy to achieve political ends. She argues that Gazprom is no different from the majority state-owned energy companies in France or Norway.

Both Emerson and Montanaro-Jankovski acknowledge the huge potential of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as alternative gas suppliers. But, Emerson said, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are being actively courted by Russia and have yet to decide whether to invest in a trans-Caspian pipeline, aiming for an independent link-up with Europe via Nabucco.

Montanaro-Jankovski noted that the region currently remains "dependent" on Russia, adding that Kazakhstan would be the only viable partner for the EU, as the two others are run by unreformed dictatorships.

Emerson argues that the EU must diversify its energy supplies to counteract Russia's strong-arm tactics. He said Russia must be made to understand its future as Europe's preeminent energy supplier is at risk.

He said Gazprom -- and by extension the Russian government -- is involved in "very lively strategic diplomacy," trying to bypass Ukraine by means of building a pipeline under the Baltic Sea and augmenting the one heading for Turkey.

"We observe Gazprom trying to multiply both its diversified routes on either side of Ukraine and its attempts to establish footholds or more than footholds in the gas-distribution networks in as many European countries as possible," Emerson said.

Montanaro-Jankovski disagrees. She said the EU should not view the Gazprom moves as politically threatening. Instead, she said, the EU is much more threatened by the possibility that insufficient investment could lead to a sudden collapse of Russian deliveries.