Interview Euronews.ro
Bogdan Rădulescu: Will we still face in the winter of this new year 2024 an energy crisis like the one in 2022, when the West, as a sanction against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, decided to stop importing Russian gas?
Corneliu Bodea: I don’t think there is an imminent crisis situation, neither this winter nor in the future, related to Europe’s gas supply. We have overcome a critical moment. But, let’s not forget that we have gone through a critical moment. We must not jump to the conclusion that we have managed, even without any problem, to overcome this drastic reduction in gas imports. We must remember that during 2022 we witnessed an unprecedented crisis in energy prices, an extraordinary crisis in which the price of gas had exceeded 200 euros on the European stock exchanges. It was a crisis in which this explosion in gas prices brought with it a fantastic increase in electricity prices. Electricity prices had increased more than 10 times. Electricity prices had increased more than 10 times at certain times.
“We, the Europeans, have received a hard blow that has cost the economy of the European Union, including Romania’s. If we in Romania today have a decrease in energy consumption, and here I am referring to electricity, of about 7%, it is also due to the fact that, during 2022, energy prices were so high that certain industrial segments strongly reduced their production, and some of them even closed.”
How did the European Union manage to cope with an unprecedented energy crisis, after the decision to give up Russian gas, as a sanction imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine?
The European Union, as well as other countries that, although not members of the European Union, are part of Europe, and this European energy whole, have managed to identify additional sources or alternative solutions of gas, generally those coming from the United States. The Americans were a major supplier of liquefied natural gas, especially during the period of acute energy crisis in the EU in the spring of 2022, which followed the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine. Back then, the United States was a major supplier of gas.
Norway is an example of a state that, although it is not a member of the European Union, remains a European state attached to the values promoted by the EU. In order to make up for the gas supply deficit in the EU, Norway has greatly increased the production and export of gas to other countries in Europe. Last but not least, we would apply to countries in the Middle East and the Presic Gulf area as alternative gas sources. One of these states is Qatar, which, mainly, based on liquefied natural gas, managed to supply part of the Europeans’ gas demand.
Russia is no longer able to use gas as an energy weapon today. The Kremlin believed that gas exports were an instrument of political pressure on Europe. Did the Russians miscalculate?
For Russia, the export of more than 150 billion cubic meters to 200 billion meters of gas annually to the European Union represented an economic activity and an essential source of income, extremely important, for the Kremlin’s budget. It is obvious that, from a strategic point of view, the Russian Federation would never have wanted, nor will it want in the future, to leave Europe without gas. Certainly, when it was forced to face this very harsh embargo from the European states and the United States mainly, Russia tried to use this energy weapon, considering that the European Union would find it more difficult than it was in reality to deal with the energy crisis. The Russians’ calculation was wrong.
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