EU policymakers have remembered the hard lessons taught by a three-week interruption in Russian gas supplies via Ukraine in January 2009 that occurred as Europe was clawing its way out of the 2008 global economic and banking crisis. That icy winter it realized the true extent of its reliance on Gazprom, and how many of its pipelines in eastern Europe were configured to receive gas only from the east (EC Apr.25'14). The virtues of supply diversification and infrastructure resilience were duly learned, and remedies agreed by EU states: Gaps in Europe's gas infrastructure had to be filled and those with only one import source had to get at least two others.
展开▼
