The Wall Street Journal has a good column today on one of our favorite topics – Russia’s energy disaggregation of Europe.

Accelerating EU plans to build a single market for energy would have multiple benefits. It would encourage much more competition between energy providers, bringing down prices for consumers in the process, and fuel investments in intra-European power grids. It would also help to cushion the effect on mostly East European countries when key energy exporters to Europe fiddle with pipelines — a practice, alas, not exclusive to the Kremlin. Europe would be better able to compensate energy or electricity shortages in countries such as Bulgaria or Hungary the next time Ukraine or Russia reduces gas supplies to the region. Moreover, it would give Europe greater market power to fight anti-competitive behavior by Russian energy companies like Gazprom.