Predictably the Russia-Ukraine spat over gas supply has started to affect supplies to the EU, with Russia claiming that Ukraine is stealing the EU’s gas and then there’s the odd question of the Turkmenistan gas that Ukraine is supposed to receive, that BBC report quotes Gazprom as saying “Today the Ukrainian gas transporting system is receiving nothing but Russian gas” which begs the question is Russia blocking the supply of Turkmen gas to Ukraine as well ?
To go along with this there’s an editorial at the BBC looking at “Energy and the new world power play” which makes a couple of nice counterpoints to the current state of play in the middle east, saying:
Oil played its part in a 1953 coup in Iran – organised by the US and Britain. They overthrew an elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh and installed Shah Reza Pahlavi instead, a move that still reverberates in relations with Iran.
and:
We learned from British archives released a couple of years ago that in 1973, the US drew up a plan to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi in response to the Arab oil embargo.
It’s well worth a read if you want to find out things like why China tends to block UN resolutions in Sudan and the like..