Putin Wanted Europe at His Feet

It seems that Russia does not have enough gas in its reserves, says gas experts Umicevic.

Watching today’s gas summit in Moscow, Jasminko Umicevic, an expert for gas from the London company Gas&Oil Consulting Ltd., and former deputy director of the Croatian oil and gas company INA, expects that a final agreement will be reached between the Ukraine and Russia, about supplying Europe with gas.

“There are no longer any reasons or explanations from the Ukraine or Russia that could justify the further holding of gas. Since the gas crisis started, the arguments changed from debts, to theft, to the technical inability of the gas pipeline… and in the end politics ended up being the key. Before all, Putin wanted that all of Europe’s premiers at his feet, which did not succeed in the end – you see, not even our (Croatia’s) Polancec went – in order to confirm his position as a power in Europe. Through this crisis he achieved his political interests in the Ukraine, with the aim of shaking the pro-west Juscenko, and strengthening the positions of Timosenko and Janukovic who are Russian satellites” said Umicevic for Javno.com.

“However, an especially interesting theory has been circulating in European oil and gas business circles, and that is that Russia does not have enough gas in its reserves to satisfy all of the contracts that it has. It is strange that the pressure in the reserves, if they are full, is still. You cannot stop the reserves because of the pressure, and that is not happening now.

In the end Putin will lose because these days the Nabucco project has been actualised, which brings Azerbaijani gas into Europe, and the Adriatic-Ionian route that goes via Albania, up the Adriatic coast into Italy and Switzerland.