Energy Blast – Sept 30, 2011

Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz has told a symposium that the country may sever gas contracts with Russia, if discounts on fuel supply fail to be agreed on.  The minister noted that over the past 29 months natural gas prices rose 39%.  Ankara is not alone in its complaints over Gazprom’s prices, says Reuters, with discontent growing across the EU as a whole.  Kiev and Moscow are apparently continuing to negotiate the conditions for natural gas supplies and transit within the agreements reached by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on September 24.  Ukraine’s Energy Minister Yuri Boiko has said the country has no plans to cut its fees for shipping Russian natural gas to Europe in exchange for a lower price on the gas it imports for its own needs.  Naftogaz Ukrainy has begun its EU-inspired restructuring.  The European Union’s top energy official has expressed doubt as to whether the bloc will meet a 2014 deadline for creating a single EU-wide market for gas and electricity.  Poland has stated it will balk at any attempts by the EU to co-opt or control the extraction of its shale gas deposits.  Russia claims that new discoveries in the Arctic may have doubled the nation’s energy reserves.  Whilst melting Arctic ice is making the Northern Sea Route a highly attractive transit route for shipping companies, many of them reportedly remain deterred by Russian bureaucracy.