The European Union urged Russia and other neighbors on Monday to commit to long-term energy contracts that would guarantee them customers and investments while securing affordable oil and natural gas supplies for the EU in the decades ahead.
The appeal on the first day of a two-day conference of officials from the 25 EU nations and oil and natural gas exporting countries, underscored Western Europe’s desire to make energy a top priority at a time when its demand is growing, its own supplies are dwindling and world prices are high.
Europe is ready to make “multibillion investments” in energy production and transport but wanted partner countries to commit to transparency and “stable, predictable and nondiscriminatory frameworks,” said the EU energy commissioners Andris Piebalgs.
In March, the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, is to introduce an energy policy that would commit the 25-nation Union to diversify energy sources, develop more renewables and increase energy savings while acknowledging it would continue to depend on often unstable, undemocratic nations to provide energy.
“The scramble for energy risks being pretty unprincipled,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said.
“However, we choose to deal with such regimes, others will put their energy needs above everything else.”
World energy consumption is set to increase by well over 50% over the next 25 years, Solana told the conference.
The EU is the world’s largest importer and the second-largest consumer of energy after the United States. It imports about half of its energy.
“Without policy reform, this will rise to 70%, “ over the next 25 years said Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU Commission president. He said the EU needed a new policy that “maintains Europe’s competitiveness, safeguards our environmental objectives and ensures our security of supply.”
Russia supplies a quarter of Europe’s oil and more than two-fifths of its natural gas.
European imports have fueled Russian’s economic revival, while “the stable flow of reasonably priced energy has been an important factor underlying the EU’s economic growth and well-being,” said Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU external relations commissioner. “It is this “win-win” situation which both sides must work to reinforce”.
The EU conference was attended by officials from Norway, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan, and executives from energy companies Gazprom, E.ON Ruhrgas, Royal Dutch Shell and BP.
(The Associated Press, 20/11/2006)