February 4, 2008 By Robert Amsterdam

Turkmenistan and the Natural Gas Domino Effect

We’ve recently blogged about the boost given to the Nabucco pipeline project from the enlistment of RWE, as well as the potential concerns over Turkmenistan’s reliability as a supplier (the recent cut-off of supply to Iran caused a domino effect which reached all the way to Greece and the EU). These concerns have not diminished over recent weeks, and it now appears that Europe has to seriously reckon with how to deal with an increasingly assertive government in Turkmenistan that is eager to play hardball in energy politics. However, this supply cut-off should not be compared with the Gazprom-Ukraine example for several reasons.