The soaring oil and gas prices, which began before the Russian invasion and escalated afterwards, portends a prolonged energy crisis. In an attempt to control the situation, the EU leadership has announced its gradual decoupling from Russian oil, gas and coal.
How feasible is this? It remains to be seen in practice. For the time being and for the foreseeable future, however, Europe is energy dependent on Russian hydrocarbons. Natural gas, and partly oil, comes from Russia through a complex network of pipelines.
Russia supplies more than a third of the natural gas consumed in Europe and remains one of the main sources of oil supply on the Old Continent. The EU also imports gas from Norway, Britain and the Netherlands, but the reserves of these three countries are running out. Thus, Russia remains Europe's main energy supplier, supplying Europe with 158 billion metric tons of natural gas.
It is indicative that 50% of the natural gas imported by Germany comes from Russia. France covers 25% of its energy supply from Russia, due to the fact that it relies more than any other European country on nuclear energy. Italy's dependence on Russian gas is 46%.
Smaller countries such as Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, Finland and Latvia are even more dependent on Russian gas. In some cases, the dependence exceeds 90%. Greece's dependence is also significant. In contrast, the United Kingdom derives half of its energy needs in natural gas from domestic sources, while its main external suppliers are Norway and Qatar. Due to its geographical location, Spain is mainly supplied by Algeria and the US.
The Nord Stream 1 subsea pipeline
In Europe there are pipelines in operation, pipelines awaiting approval, pipelines under construction and finally those pipelines that are no longer in operation. An important operational pipeline is the Nord Stream 1 undersea pipeline, which supplies Russian gas directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea.
[/B][/B][/B]It was premiered in 2011, but the construction project started in the 1990s. Its construction, which cost €7.4 billion, was carried out by a consortium of four leading companies, led by Russia's Gazprom (51%). The second line was opened in 2012. Through Nord Stream 1, one third of all Russian gas exports to Europe are piped to Europe.
The pipeline connected the Russian city of Vyborg (130 km northwest of St. Petersburg) with the German city of Greifswald. As mentioned above, it crosses the Baltic Sea underwater, passing through the EEZs of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, as well as the territorial waters of Russia, Denmark and Germany. At 1,224 km long, it is the longest undersea pipeline in the world, surpassing the Lanzeld pipeline by 54 km.
The annual capacity of Nord Stream 1 is 55 billion cubic metres. It consists of thousands of pipes weighing 24 tonnes each. The construction of the pipeline was at the time met with political opposition, mainly from Poland. It undoubtedly further consolidated the energy dependence of Germany and other European countries on Russian gas, but at the same time it solved the energy problem of these countries in a cheap way.
Nord Stream 2
The construction of the parallel undersea pipeline Nord Stream 2 has also been completed, but its operation has been frozen, first because of some legal problems and then because of the Ukrainian crisis. This gas pipeline would have met the energy needs of Germany and neighbouring European countries. The Nord Stream pipeline has a length of 230 230 metres and has the capacity to transport 151 million cubic metres of natural gas per day, i.e. it has the potential to double the amount of Russian gas that Germany imports via the Baltic Sea.
The Yamal-Europe onshore pipeline
Further south there is the Yamal-Europe onshore pipeline, which passes through Belarus and supplies Poland and Germany.
Further south there is the Yamal-Europe onshore pipeline, which passes through Belarus and supplies Poland and Germany. The Yamal-Europe pipeline is 4,196 km long and connects the Russian gas fields on the Yamal Peninsula in western Siberia with Poland and Germany.
The pipeline channels around 15% of Russia's annual gas supply westwards. Its capacity is 33 billion cubic meters per year, or about 100 million cubic meters per day. Yamal-Europe also began operating in reverse, transporting gas from Germany to Poland.
The Blue Stream subsea pipeline
To the south is the 774 km-long, two-line Blue Stream subsea pipeline, which carries Russian gas to Turkey across the Black Sea. The cost of the project was $3.2 billion. Its transport capacity is 16 billion cubic metres per year. The preparation of the project started in 1997 and its construction took place in 2001-2002.
The subsea route was designed by the Italian company Saipem and the onshore section in Russia by Stroytransgaz (starting in Stavropol and ending in Krasnodar province). Blue Stream became operational in February 2003. However, due to a dispute between Moscow and Ankara over prices, the official opening ceremony at the Darusu gas metering station took place on 17 September 2005. Blue Stream became fully operational in 2010.
The German NEL pipeline
A lesser known pipeline is the German NEL, which cost €1 billion. It ends in the town of Rehden, is 440 km long and can carry around 20 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. At the same time it is connected to two pipelines, Rehden-Hamburg and Midal. In essence, it supplies the South of Germany with natural gas.
The OPAL pipeline
The OPAL pipeline crosses eastern Germany. It runs parallel to the German-Polish border. It is 470 km long and carries more than 35 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. It connects with the central European pipelines at the German-Czech border. By law, because the pipeline is only connected to Nord Stream 1, it could only use 50% of its capacity.
Germany in 2016 changed this provision, which created tensions with Poland. In particular, in 2016, at the request of Gazprom, the German Federal Network Agency notified the Commission of its intention to amend certain provisions of the exemption granted in 2009.
In essence, the planned amendment would make it possible to use the full capacity of the OPAL gas pipeline, provided that at least 50% of the gas transported would be sold by auction. They succeeded for some years but in 2019, after pressure-threats from the Trump administration, the Germans reverted to the old 50% regime.
The Soyuz pipeline
The Soyuz pipeline starts in Russia and joins the Brotherhood-Transgas pipeline. Through Ukraine, it is supplied to Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia. Via a branch line, natural gas is also supplied to Bosnia. Croatia is also supplied via Austria and Slovenia.
Via the Soyuz southern branch, which passes through Moldova, natural gas is supplied to Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia (with a branch) and Greece. Montenegro and Kosovo have no gas infrastructure, while in Albania it is quite limited, with no interconnection with international pipelines.
Previously, all pipelines sending Russian gas were onshore and passed through Ukraine. It was, after all, a shorter route and easier to build. It was the disagreements between Moscow and Kiev and the Russian accusation that the Ukrainians were taking gas without paying that forced Russia to seek alternative routes to channel gas to Europe, bypassing Ukraine. This gave rise to the NordStream pipeline and the plan for the SouthStream pipeline.
The SouthStream pipeline
The SouthStream plan, then, was an attempt by Russia to build an additional route to Europe's major markets. It was designed to start underwater from Russia and the undersea section would end in Bulgaria where it would branch off. One branch would go to Greece and from there to Italy. The other branch would go to Serbia and from there to central Europe.
The EU refused to include the pipeline in the trans-European networks, and European sanctions against Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 cancelled the project because of Bulgarian opposition. Thus, instead of SouthStream, TurkishStream was built, which transported Russian gas by sea to the Turkish coast and from there supplies Greece and other Balkan countries.
The TurkishStream
TurkishStream comprises two twin pipelines, each with an annual capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres (bcm). The first pipeline supplies Turkey and the second supplies the Balkan countries. It thus transports 31.5 billion cubic metres of gas per year, crossing the Black Sea over a length of 930 km. This makes Turkey the second largest customer of Russia after Germany.
The Druzhba pipeline
The Druzhba pipeline, which means "Friendship", transports oil over a distance of 4,000 km. It starts in the town of Samara, splits within Belarus into two branches with one going to Poland and Germany and the other to Ukraine, Slovakia and Czech Republic-Hungary.
Baltic Pipeline System
The BPS (Baltic Pipeline System) is an oil pipeline with a capacity of 1.3 million bbl per day, terminating at the port of Primorsk near Petrograd from where the oil is piped to markets by tanker. The BTC, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline also transports Azeri oil to the port of Ceyhan in southern Turkey, opposite Cyprus. It carries crude oil on a 1,760 km route. The pipeline was built at the urging of the West, which wanted to avoid the pipeline passing through Russian territory and also had to bypass the Bosphorus, which is congested.
Mapping the pipelines is a very complicated process. According to the Global Energy Monitor, at the end of 2020 there were at least 2,381 operational oil and gas pipelines across the globe running through the territory of 162 countries. The total length of these pipelines is estimated at over 1,180,000 km - enough to circle the Earth 30 times!
649 of the 2,381 pipelines are oil pipelines and 1,732 pipelines carry natural gas, while 33 are under construction. First in pipelines is the US. It is followed by Russia, which has 38,419 km of oil pipelines and 92,831 km of natural gas pipelines. It is followed by Canada, China and Australia.
Source: protothema.gr
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