Page 14 - FSUOGM Week 04 2023

FSUOGM POLICY FSUOGM

Borrell says EU has completely

overcome its Russian energy

dependency

EU THE EU has “completely overcome its energy heating season left to go. Prices for gas at the
dependence on Russia”, EU foreign policy chief Dutch TTF hub have fallen back to pre-war lev-
Borrell hailed the bloc’s Josep Borrell said on January 22. els as a result.
effort in overcoming "We have, in a few months, abolished the Germany has been key to the easing of
dependence on Russian energy dependence on Russia that we had built pressure after it managed to source significant
energy. up for years," Borrell said in an interview with El amounts of LNG over the last year. Previously
Diario published at the weekend. without any LNG import facilities, the third of
"We have been through an extraordinarily five planned floating LNG (FLNG) terminals
tense phase of rising prices, but they are back at came online at the weekend, and work is under-
pre-war values," Borrell told the Spanish news- way to build a permanent onshore terminal that
paper. "We are again with the megawatt hour is slated for completion this year.
of gas at the pre-war price, which was already The tensions in the energy market can no
very high. (...) But the brutal peak in August was longer be attributed to the situation in Ukraine,
largely caused by the speculative tensions in the Borrell told the Spanish newspaper. "It is a struc-
markets," he said. tural problem of energy and, in particular, of the
Gas storage tanks in Europe remain at a correlation between gas prices and electricity
record 78.3% full as of January 20, with Ger- prices," he clarified. He said that hopefully the
man tanks 86.5% full – well above the five-year European Commission would soon present a
average with only two and half months of the proposal to correct the situation. ™

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 04 25•January•2023