Energy Blackmail is a Well Practiced Art

The Nord Stream pipeline is back in the news this week, and unfortunately it’s not main stream press reviews of Grigory Pasko’s documentary.  The Financial Times was carrying a three-frame photo in its special Russia business pull-out section of Vladimir Putin walking by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at an energy summit giving him a high five, while the Andrew Kramer at the New York Times had the longer investigative piece, which is attracting a lot of attention.  One little detail I noticed in the Kramer piece:

But officials in Central and Eastern Europe fear that while profits from the pipeline, a joint venture between Gazprom and a trio of German and Dutch companies, will flow to Russian suppliers and German utilities, the long trod-upon countries once under the Soviet umbrella will become more vulnerable to energy blackmail.

Such tactics are hardly without precedent. A Swedish Defense Ministry-affiliated research organization has identified 55 politically linked disruptions in the energy supply of Eastern Europe since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Does somebody have this report citing 55 cases of energy blackmail or politically influenced supply interruptions?  I feel tremendously remiss in not having this posted on this blog…  Perhaps the Swedes published this right when me and my pal Guy were taking off from Baikonur for a little tour, so I may have missed it.

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2 Comments

  1. John
    Posted October 13, 2009 at 10:11 pm | Permalink

    The Swedish report “SWEDEN AND THE NEGP: A Pilot Study of the North European Gas Pipeline and Sweden’s Dependence on Russian Energy” can be found at http://www2.foi.se/rapp/foir1984.pdf. The link to the report is present in the New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/world/europe/13pipes.html?_r=2&hp).

  2. James
    Posted October 13, 2009 at 10:16 pm | Permalink

    Thanks, John. Didn’t see that link!

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