Russian gas pipeline

MOSCOW, June 11 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that Ukraine had made unsuccessful attempt to attack a Russian naval ship with six high-speed drone boats as the Russian vessel patrolled major natural gas pipelines in the Black Sea. The 'Priazovye' ship was carrying out what Russia's defence ministry said was "monitoring of the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea." Ukraine attacked in the early hours of Sunday about 300 km south-east of Sevastopol, the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, the defence ministry said. At the time of the attack, a U.S. RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft was in the central area of the Black Sea, the defence ministry said. "The Black Sea Fleet ship 'Priazovye' continues to carry out its assigned tasks," the defence ministry said. Russia and Turkey formally launched TurkStream with capacity of 31.5 billion cubic metres per year in January 2020. The pipeline, which allows Moscow to bypass Ukraine as a transit route to Europe, carries Russian natural gas to southern Europe through the Black Sea and Turkey. The Blue Stream pipeline delivers Russian gas to Turkey.

T he most significant defeat in Russia’s war on Ukraine was suffered not on a battlefield but in the marketplace. The Russian aggressors had expected to use natural gas as a weapon to bend Western Europe to their will. The weapon failed. Why? And will the failure continue? Unlike oil, which is easily transported by ocean tanker, gas moves most efficiently and economically through fixed pipelines. Pipelines are time-consuming and expensive to build. Once the pipeline is laid, over land or underwater, the buyer at one end is bound to the seller on the other end. Gas can move by tanker, too, but first it must be compressed into liquid form. Compressing gas is expensive and technologically demanding. In the 2010s, European consumers preferred to rely on cheaper and supposedly reliable pipeline gas from Russia. Then, in 2021, the year before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Europeans abruptly discovered the limits of Russian-energy reliability. The Russian pipeline network can carry only so much gas at a time. In winter, Europe consumes more than the network can convey, so Europe prepares for shortages by building big inventories of gas in the summertime, when it uses less. Russian actions in the summer of 2021 thwarted European inventory building. A shortage loomed—and prices spiked. I The Atlantic on January 5, 2022: In a normal year, Europe would enter the winter with These high prices have offered windfall opportunities for people with gas to sell. Yet Russia has refused thos...

In 2015, Russian energy giant Gazprom announced plans to build a second pipeline that would double the amount of Russian natural gas pumped into Germany. Now, six years later, U.S.-Ukraine relations are strained, U.S. lawmakers are fuming at U.S. President Joe Biden as well as at one another, Eastern Europeans are mad at Germany, and the U.S. State Department can’t get its ambassadors to Mexico, Algeria, or Cameroon confirmed—all thanks to the pipeline project. In 2015, Russian energy giant Gazprom announced plans to build a second pipeline that would double the amount of Russian natural gas pumped into Germany. Now, six years later, U.S.-Ukraine relations are strained, U.S. lawmakers are fuming at U.S. President Joe Biden as well as at one another, Eastern Europeans are mad at Germany, and the U.S. State Department can’t get its ambassadors to Mexico, Algeria, or Cameroon confirmed—all thanks to the pipeline project. The furor peaked this week as news reports emerged that the Biden administration was about to unveil a deal with Germany intended to shield Eastern European allies from future Russian efforts to use the pipeline as a geopolitical weapon, including threats to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine. Ukraine and Poland batted down the deal almost immediately after it was released, and now, the Biden administration is taking flak from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Depending on who you ask (there’s a whole thicket of lobbyists, administration officials, diplomats...

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Russian gas exports to Europe via pipelines plummeted to a post-Soviet low in 2022 as its largest customer cut imports due to the conflict in Ukraine and a major pipeline was damaged by mysterious blasts, Gazprom data The European Union, traditionally Russia's largest consumer for oil and gas, has for years spoken about cutting its reliance on Russian energy, but Brussels got serious after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February. State-controlled Gazprom, citing Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller, a long-standing ally of President Vladimir Putin, said its exports outside of ex-Soviet Union will reach 100.9 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year. That is a fall of more than 45% from 185.1 bcm in 2021 and includes supplies to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline, through which Gazprom supplied 10.39 bcm last year. Russian direct gas exports to Germany, Europe's largest economy, were halted in September following blasts at the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Russia accused Russian gas exports via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline totalled record-high 59.2 bcm last year. The 100.9 bcm of Russian gas pipeline supplies, which Gazprom defines as exports to "far abroad", or outside the former-Soviet Union, is one of the lowest since the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991. One of Gazprom's previous post-Soviet lows of gas sales to "far abroad" was at 117.4 bcm in 1995, according to Gazprom Export. Russia, meanwhile has been increasing its...

Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces. Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure. The intelligence report was based on information obtained from an individual in Ukraine. The source’s information could not immediately be corroborated, but the CIA shared the report with Germany and other European countries last June, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations and diplomatic discussions. The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year, Western allies have had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage. That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European ser...