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By Thomas O’Donnell
I told Al Jazeera that Finland is well prepared, having worked since 2017 with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – the Baltic states – and with Poland to connect them all together with new pipelines, also to access LNG, storage and soon, new supplies from Norway.
Finland has also rented a regasification ship, from a US firm, to receive 5 billion cubic meters per year of LNG, whch will be plenty to supply both itself and Estonia in the wake of Putin cutting off Gazprom supplies of natural gas. Finland refuses, as did Poland too, to pay Moscow in rubles and so are being punished by Putin.
They were well prepared and had no illusions. As I mention here, Germany and others (e.g., Austria) did the exact opposite, and became even more dependent on Russian gas imports.
Putin now is risking losing, step-by-step all his customers for gas from Western Siberia’s Urengoy and Yamal peninsula. It would take from five-to-ten years to build new, very expensive pipelines to start shipping this now-stranded Russian gas to China instead. This will be a big hit to the Kremlin’s ability to wage war against Ukraine.
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Thomas O’Donnell is an well known Energy, Geopolitics of Global Oil/Gas Markets expert. He is Adjunct Faculty at Hertie School of Governance & Freie Universität-Berlin and has a PhD in Nuclear Physics from University of Michigan. Energiesnet.com does not necessarily share these views.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Al Jazeera, on May 21, 2022. All comments posted and published on EnergiesNet.com, do not reflect either for or against the opinion expressed in the comment as an endorsement of EnergiesNet.com or Petroleumworld.
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EnergiesNet.com 05 23 2022
