EU to reveal new energy strategy

The EC plans to examine all gas and oil supply deals that the member states conclude with third countries with an eye to the security of the EU as a whole.

Energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who unveiled the plan in Brussels today, has urged closer cooperation of the member states in the energy sphere.

Some EU countries, like Italy and Germany, have not been eager to adopt a common energy policy, preferring to take care of their interests themselves, concluding deals with Russia’s giant gas supplier Gazprom.

Some other countries are under political pressure from suppliers, such as Gazprom, the biggest supplier of gas to the EU.

The EC wants to offer legal aid to countries signing contracts on energy supplies and to analyze such deals.

They will be required to submit “all existing and provisionally applied intergovernmental agreements between them and third countries in their entirety,. Including their annexes and other texts and all amendments to the commission,” reads the document.

EU energy policy is one of the priorities of Poland’s current EU presidency. Warsaw will now start a discussion within the EU on the new document.

Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin has pressed a button releasing technical gas to fill up the Nord Stream pipeline built with Germany.

First supplies of natural gas will reach Germany in late October or early November. President Putin, who personally supervised successive stages of opening the pipeline, said it would reduce Russian dependence on Ukrainian transit lines, which Kiev closed at the height of its gas price disputes with Moscow. It will also by-pass other transit countries: Poland and Belarus.

The Nord Stream twin pipeline is expected to carry a total of 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. The 1,224 km long pipeline links Vyborg in north-west Russia with Sassnitz in north-east Germany. (kk/pg)