b> Russia, the EU and Gas

On New Year's Day, Vladimir Putin marked the beginning of Russia's presidency of the G8 group of leading industrialised nations by declaring a new "cold war". He briefly cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine and therefore much of Europe, brandishing Russia's vast energy reserves as his Soviet predecessors once flaunted nuclear rockets. The Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute served as a wake-up call for the European Union, which obtains a quarter of its gas from Russia. (The EU is likely to import up to 75% of its natural gas requirements by 2020.) Russia is destined by virtue of its wealth of natural resources to become a pivotal player on the global energy chessboard in the coming decades. As world energy demand grows, particularly because of China's explosive rise as an economic force, Russia's wealth and potential power are certain to grow as well.

Launching a new FPC pamphlet, Coby van der Linde, head of the International Energy Programme at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands, and one of the world's leading gas experts, assessed the threat the EU's reliance on Russian gas will pose to its energy security and suggest that only Russia's transformation into a modern, technologically advanced and responsible producer of energy will safeguard European interests in the coming decades.