Title: Russia in the European energy sector - Wikipedia
Headings: Russia in the European energy sector
Russia in the European energy sector
Contents
History
Natural gas deliveries
Disputes and diversification efforts
Nuclear fuel supplies
See also
References

Content: Liquefied natural gas and Nord Stream 2
Angela Merkel criticized the United States's sanctions against Russia that target EU–Russia energy projects. On the eve of the 2006 Riga summit, Senator Richard Lugar, head of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, declared that "the most likely source of armed conflict in the European theatre and the surrounding regions will be energy scarcity and manipulation." Since then, the variety of national policies and stances of larger exporters versus larger dependents of Russian gas, together with the segmentation of the European gas market, has become a prominent issue in European politics toward Russia, with significant geopolitical implications for economic and political ties between the EU and Russia. These ties have occasionally led to calls for greater European energy diversity, although such efforts are complicated by the fact that many European customers have long term legal contracts for gas deliveries despite the disputes, most of which stretch beyond 2025–2030. The EU's failure to successfully advance a common energy policy can be further exemplified by the building of the Nord Stream pipeline, which embodies the divisions between the center and the periphery of the EU—between Old and New Europe. Natural gas presented as an instrument of Russian state power
A number of disputes over the natural gas prices in which Russia was using pipeline shutdowns in what was described as "tool for intimidation and blackmail" caused the European Union to significantly increase efforts to diversify its energy sources. Some have even argued that Russia has developed "the capacity to use unilateral economic sanctions in the form of gas pricing and gas disruptions against many European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states". During an anti-trust investigation initiated in 2011 against Gazprom, a number of internal company documents were seized that documented a number of "abusive practices" in an attempt to "segment the internal [EU] market along national borders" and impose "unfair pricing". Part of the aim of the Energy Union is to diversify the EU’s gas supplies away from Russia, which has already proved to be an unreliable partner, first in 2006 and then in 2009, and which threatened to become one again at the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine in 2013–2014. — European Council of Foreign Relations, 2015
The planned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was opposed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, U.S. President Donald Trump and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.