Wirtschaft ⇒ Economist: Energetic blackmail

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Efforts to extort money to avoid another gas cut-off come to nothing

IN BLACKMAIL timing can be everything. The governments of Russia and Ukraine have cause to ponder this after failing to extract billions of euros from the European Union in the name of keeping Russian gas flowing to Europe next winter.

Thanks to recession and competition from cheaper suppliers, European demand for Russian gas has fallen. It is also summer. So right now governments and gas companies are unusually brave over threats to cut off the gas. They have resisted pressure to give Ukraine a huge loan that both the Russians and Ukraine’s squabbling leaders say is needed to avoid another dispute like the one that blocked Russian gas in January, affecting 18 of the 27 EU countries. Whether Europe’s nerve will hold as winter approaches remains to be seen. Russia supplies 42% of all EU gas imports, and its share is rising.

In May Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, told the EU that Ukraine must have help paying for gas to fill the Soviet-era storage tanks it uses to meet its domestic needs each winter. If Europe wanted to avoid cut-offs, an emergency loan of some $4.2 billion would be needed, he said. Russian officials and gas bosses added ominously that Ukraine was so cash-strapped it might miss a July 7th deadline for paying its June gas bill.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, also told EU officials that $5 billion was needed to avert a fresh gas crisis. Yet the price had fallen sharply when the Ukrainians attended a meeting in Brussels on June 29th with officials from the EU, the IMF and other institutions to discuss upgrading the country’s creaking gas infrastructure. Sources say that the Ukrainian envoys now wanted only $2.1 billion to ward off trouble next winter.

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