EU urged to get tough over future gas supplies

A former top official with the International Energy Agency has said Europe should “make it clear it is fed up” with energy being used as a “political football”.

The comments, from William Ramsay, come in the wake of the recent gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia which resulted in the disruption of gas supplies to Europe.

Speaking in Brussels, Ramsay criticised both countries, but Kiev in particular. “Politicians in Ukraine have chosen gas as an appealing football to throw back and forth as they skirmish for political position,” he said.

“That may be a suitable strategy inside Ukraine but Europe needs to make clear it is fed up with that scenario and wants gas trade removed from the game.”

Ramsay, who until last September was executive director of the IEA, said the gas dispute between the two countries “is becoming an annual fixture”.

“Other than providing an invigorating policy challenge at the start of the year, the conflict is to no-one’s benefit,” he added.

He also accused European countries for not heeding warnings of the dispute, saying, “We were warned of this conflict for months.”

Ramsay, deputy assistant US secretary of state for energy from 1989-93, was speaking at an energy conference organised by the Paris-based think-tank, the Institute of International Relations.

He said another lesson to be learned from the row was that “Europe needs to understand that whether a gas disruption is commercial, political or technical, the best defence is a better integrated European gas market”.

“Europe’s gas market is still tribal,” he added, “If your tribe does not have any geologic storage or alternative routes to different suppliers, the heat goes off.”

His comments come on the day the EU launches its third sustainable energy week. The event brings together hundreds of experts and stakeholders to discuss ways of tackling global warming.

Speaking on the first day, Claude Lorea, technical director of Cembureau, the European Cement Association, threw her weight behind the EU's efforts to increase energy efficiency by 20 per cent by the year 2020.

She said, "Alternative fuels provide a solution in terms of reducing fossil fuel dependency and contributes to the lowering of, in particular, CO2 emissions in other sectors."

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