Oil, Gas & Ukraine

If you want to be called a conspiracy theorist, bring up the role of oil whenever the United States gets involved in a military confrontation. In the case of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine, though, energy politics are out in the open.

The reliance of Ukraine and parts of Europe on Russian natural gas led an overwhelmingly anti-Russian US media to wonder if two policy goals could be achieved simultaneously: drilling for more oil and gas in the United States, and turning some of Vladimir Putin’s customers into  buyers.

As the Washington Post (3/22/14) put it, “There’s an obvious path forward that coincides with the United States’—indeed, the world’s—economic interests. That path is lifting irrational restrictions on exports and making it easier to build natural gas export terminals.”

The New York Times (3/6/14) asserted, “Increasing natural gas exports could serve American foreign-policy interests in Europe,”

 USA Today (3/20/14) cheered: “The good news is that the West can turn the tables on Putin, freeing Europe from its dependency and in the process making Russia pay dearly.” For them, it wasn’t just about US exports: “Germany could become much less dependent on Russia by approving hydraulic fracturing (fracking for short) and reversing its foolish decision to abandon nuclear energy.”

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman (3/5/14) advised that the United States should go after “the twin pillars of [Putin’s] regime: oil and gas.” The correct policy, Friedman advised, would be “investing in the facilities to liquefy and export our natural gas bounty (provided it is extracted at the highest environmental standards) and making Europe, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, more dependent on us instead.”

 Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (3/3/14) advised that “the Keystone Pipeline must be approved” because “Russia is blackmailing Europe over energy.... The more oil and natural gas the USA and Canada can produce and distribute, the weaker Russia becomes on the world stage.”

But making Russia “pay dearly” is harder than it sounds, especially since the recent completion of the East Siberia/Pacific Ocean pipeline gives it direct access to the Asian market—meaning that Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe, now more than ever.

And for all the enthusiasm for the US replacing Russia as Europe’s energy source, there are tremendous obstacles. The fact that there is not a single facility in the United States that can ship liquefied natural gas abroad (In These Times, 3/19/14) is as clear a sign as any that this is not exactly a quick and easy way to make Russia feel pain. (In case the political motivations behind all of this aren’t explicit, one bill in Congress is actually named the Fight Russian Energy Exploitation Act.)

In These Times reporter Cole Stangler (3/26/14) noted that the Ukraine crisis sparked intense congressional interest in exporting natural gas, as industry-friendly analysts pushed their line with receptive lawmakers.

In These Times reporter Cole Stangler (3/26/14) noted that the Ukraine crisis sparked intense congressional interest in exporting natural gas, as industry-friendly analysts pushed their line with receptive lawmakers. “We didn’t gin up the Ukrainian crisis,” he quoted the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas President Bill Cooper saying, who went on:
“We didn’t gin up the idea that it ought to be connected in some way to LNG exports. But Congress did, obviously, and a lot of editorials, experts and geopolitical analysts have all jumped on that. We appreciate the attention that LNG exports are receiving, and if it does provide a catalyst to make something happen that heretofore has not, then we’re going to be very happy with that."

And Stangler pointed out that amidst all this enthusiasm for fossil fuels, very few brought up climate change—which requires the US to curtail, not expand, drilling. The future of the planet is not as important, it seems, as teaching Putin a lesson.

From here