Energy Blast – Oct 4, 2011

Is Turkey’s decision to sever its contract with Gazprom linked to the raids on offices of its subsidiaries?  This analysis suggests so: ‘On the one hand, Turkey has long been seeking membership of the European Union, while on the other hand, it is Turkey that the Russian South Stream project, a thorn in the neck in Europe, depends much upon’.  Whilst Prime Minister Putin pledged full cooperation with the EU’s raids in a discussion with Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller, in the same conversation he ‘abruptly switched gears, praising Asian markets […] as if to suggest that Gazprom would have little problem finding new customers if necessary’.  The first line of the Nord Stream gas pipeline will become operational on November 8, Miller has apparently told the Prime Minister.  ‘It’s probably most fair to say we’re “energy middle class”’: the Washington Post does a mini inventory of US energy supplies; how much there is and how hard it is to extract.  In a worrying development for climate change, a hole five times the size of California appeared over the Arctic this spring.