| Jänner | Februar | März | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | Mai | Juni | ||||||
| Mai | ||||||||
| Mo | Di | Mi | Do | Fr | Sa | So | ||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | ||
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | ||
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | ||
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | ||
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||||
E-Mail Service
Medienakkreditierung
Hotelreservierung
Routenplaner
WetterCNN: In focus on world business today: the lessons drawn by the European Union from the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Officials from member states held emergency talks on the row which left some countries with a heavy shortfall in gas supplies on January 2nd. We are following that meeting in Brussels, where is Martin Bartenstein who is Austria’s economy minister and president of the EU energy ministers council, what lessons have been learned.
Bartenstein: Well, first of all we have experienced almost forty years of reliable gas supply from Gazprom from the Russians, 50 percent of the European Union’s gas imports come from there, and 80 percent of these imports come through that Ukrainian pipeline which was a tight needle now during the last days and weeks. But, of course, this ongoing dispute between the Russians and Ukrainians on gas prices was a threat to gas supplies indirectly and as we saw on January first now directly. So it is very important that this was settled, but it should be also a signal to think about the future in terms of diversification, first of all in terms of diversifications with regard to gas pipelines. It is not good that 80 percent of our supplies come via one single pipelinesystem through one single country, and secondly we also think about diversification of gas supplies in terms of liquified natural gas - like some southern European countries for example Spain, also Italy and France. We have something done here already. But more should be done. Liquefied natural gas is more competitive than it was in the past and it should be built up as a concrete alternative to gas supply from Russia
CNN: What sort of time scale could we be looking at in terms of changing our whole pattern of dependency for gas supplies, if not energy supplies broadly?
Bartenstein: Well, let me state that Russian gas will be and will remain the backbone of our gas supplies. There is no doubt about that. But many of our countries are facing a one third increase of demand until 2010, so we’ll need much more natural gas than today. If I think about completion of the Nabucco gas pipeline project from the Caspian region via Turkey, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary to Austria with the capacity of 30 million square cubic meters per year, by 2011 the first stage of this project could be completed. So all of these projects need a couple of years of construction, of planning until completion. But I think one has to start and these projects are important in order to diversify our gas supply, and if we needed a lesson to learn that was January 1st. That was a cut of up to 50 percent in gas supply, and this lesson we should take very, very serious.
