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gas and going without is not an option for Merkel. And the new route runs directly from Russia to Germany, so Germany’s gas will be cheaper.
Another objection is that Nord Stream 2 will increase Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, implying that Russia will send even more gas than now. Having more pipeline routes (Gazprom is also building the Turk Stream pipeline in southern Europe that will eventually form a trident of pipelines from Rus-
sign individual deals with individual countries. About three years ago Gaz- prom was forced to renegotiate its gas deals with most of its customers, reduc- ing prices as a result of these reforms.
Ukraine’s national gas company Naf- togaz just celebrated 1,000 days without importing any Russian gas, receiving
it instead from reversed pipeflows
from neighbours Slovakia and Poland. However, this is only possible thanks
to the EU deregulation as neither of
dependent. Over the last three decades Russia’s share of gas supplies to Europe has steadily fallen from 75% in the 1990s to 37% in 2017 and continues to fall, despite the fact that Gazprom exported record amounts of gas to Europe this year.
"In 2017 Gazprom shipped a record
high volume to non-FSU countries (Europe and Turkey) of 194.4bn cubic metres, after 179.3 bcm was exported
in 2016," Aton reported on May 4. In January-June, Gazprom’s exports of gas to the EU and Turkey increased 5.7% y/y to 101.2 bn cubic meters (cm). In 2018 exports might reach a record 205bn cm.
The rising volume of gas exports has to be set against Europe’s soaring demand for energy, which has risen from about 100 marine gas oil equivalent (Mfoe) to 400 Mfoe over the last three decades, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations. The advent of US LNG and the proliferation of renew- able energy alternatives in Europe like wind power will only erode Russian gas’s importance to Europe as an energy source further, but the volume of physi- cal gas Gazprom sends to Europe will continue to increase with demand.
“Pipelines are always very political, and the politics surrounding Nord Stream 2 are especially fraught”
sia) means supplies to Europe are more diversified, not less, and the demand for Russian gas in Europe is set to rise rapidly.
Gazprom’s market power in Europe has already been significantly weakened by the EU’s reform of energy regulations, which has limited Gazprom’s ability to
these countries are gas producers and ultimately source most of their gas from Russia. Ukraine is still using the same Russian gas as before, just now it arrives by a more roundabout route – and at a premium.
Rather than becoming more reliant on Russian gas, Europe is a lot less
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