Will there be a war in Ukraine? Emmanuel Macron is in Moscow, Monday, February 7, to meet Vladimir Putin and try to start a “de-escalation“. Eco guest of franceinfo, Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega, specialist in geopolitics and energy, explains the role that gas plays and will play in the showdown between Russia and Europe. According to him, “it’s impossible“, for Europe, to do without Russian gas.
The director of the Energy & Climate Center of Ifri, the French Institute for International Relations, underlines the dependence of Europe, whose “Russia is the first supplier” – more than 40% of the gas imported into the European Union comes from Russia. According to the researcher, “these are the countries of central Europe“who need Russian gas the most, especially Germany, “the biggest gas market in Europe, and the first customer of Gazprom, the Russian monopoly.”
“Germany is the biggest customer of the Russians.”
Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzegaon franceinfo
The specialist explains that “the gas war has been launched for several months, if not several years, already”especially “because Russia is limiting its supplies.”
Can Europe do without Russian gas? “It’s impossibleanswers the researcher. We will have to do without it in the very long term if we are aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050. The climate issue is essential. But in the immediate future, in the next ten, fifteen, twenty years, it will be very difficult, because gas plays a crucial role. Its emissions are lower than those of coal (…) and it is a very flexible energy, which is easily stored.”
The researcher recalls that Russia has already cut off the gas tap, but only partially: “In 2009, Ukraine was interrupted as a transit state for fourteen days. All of Europe was flabbergasted. Will it happen again? I don’t know, but there are obviously very big risks in do it.”