EV Archive They seek gas here, they seek gas there Sour relations with Russia are pushing the EU to hunt for gas contracts far beyond Europe’s borders, but most of those countries are unlikely to fill the bloc’s needs.

The EU’s energy chiefs have been on the road, visiting authoritarian states in the Caspian region and North Africa in the hunt for future gas supply contracts that would lessen the bloc's current dependency on Russia.

In theory, there are plenty of possibilities for new piped gas imports from Turkmenistan, Algeria and even Iran or Iraq. The problem is that there are political and economic problems in most of those regions which makes those prospects unlikely. Instead, the most reliable option for large new gas supplies to Europe within the next decade is by ship, as liquefied natural gas.

There’s lots of potential, just no realistic prospect.

“There’s lots of potential, just no realistic prospect," said Jonathan Stern, chairman of the natural gas research program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. "The potential is being written about endlessly, because there are a lot of reserves in a lot of different places like the East Med, Iran, Iraq. ... LNG is the only realistic prospect for a substantial addition of gas for a period of time."

On the road

That wasn't the language being heard during regional tours by top Commission officials.

Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission’s vice president in charge of the Energy Union, traveled to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, last week to discuss energy cooperation with representatives from Turkmenistan, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Šefčovič stressed Europe’s interest in importing gas from the region starting as early as 2019; his Caspian counterparts asked the Commission to help ensure the Southern Corridor — which would carry Azeri gas through Turkey and Greece and into Italy — is completed on schedule.

This week, Miguel Arias Cañete, the commissioner for energy and climate, has been making the rounds in North Africa to meet with officials from Algeria, Morocco and Egypt and launch the Euro-Mediterranean energy platform, aimed at boosting cooperation between the two regions on gas, electricity and renewables and encouraging energy efficiency.

The overarching driver in both of these trips is to advance one of the Energy Union’s primary goals of breaking Europe’s reliance on Russian gas.

“We have to consolidate our relationship with reliable suppliers,” Šefčovič said back in Brussels this week. “This is diversification, which opens up new opportunities for better supply, better competition for the European gas market."

Just how reliable?

The reliability of potential new supplies from the Caspian and North Africa, however, is highly questionable.

Turkmenistan has the third-largest gas reserves among countries that export, or could export, gas to Europe by pipeline, with 17.5 trillion cubic meters, according to BP. Iran is the largest, with 34 tcm, followed by Russia with 31 tcm.

But talks on the proposed Trans-Caspian pipeline have been going for years, with little progress. The pipeline would run 300 km from Turkmenistan, under the Caspian Sea into Azerbaijan and then onwards to Turkey where it would meet the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (which itself hasn't been built yet although it is considered a priority EU project). It would carry up to 30 billion cubic meters per year to the region — still only a third of the 100-plus bcm Russia currently supplies, but enough to provide some diversity.

But approval of the Caspian pipeline’s construction still depends on long-running talks over the legal status of the Caspian Sea following the fall of the Soviet Union. As it stands, any new development in the sea requires approval from each neighboring country – including Russia and Iran.

“The Trans-Caspian pipeline is something we’ve been talking about for 20 years, but it hasn’t moved an inch,” said Sijbren de Jong, a strategic analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. “Neither Russia nor Iran has any interest in seeing the pipeline being built.”

Then there is the question of whether Turkmenistan will actually want to sell its gas to Europe, particularly in the face of competition from China. Turkmenistan already exports 20 bcm per year to China, and is looking to increase that to 65 bcm in the coming years.

While relying too heavily on one buyer may prove to be unwise, China tends to offer much more attractive terms for Turkmenistan, a country that has traditionally told its buyers: “‘Guys, we’ll sell you gas at the border of our country, and what happens after that is up to you’,” said Stern.

The Chinese come, they drill the wells, they build the pipeline — they basically take care of everything, so they’re the ideal partners for the Turkmens. The Europeans come and talk about due diligence.

“The great thing about the Chinese is the Turkmens do nothing, the Chinese come, they drill the wells, they build the pipeline — they basically take care of everything, so they’re the ideal partners for the Turkmens. The Europeans come and talk about due diligence and what happens with the Caspian Sea and what happens in transit — the Turkmens don’t want to know about that stuff,” he said.

The outlook for additional gas supplies from North Africa is similarly pessimistic, with traditional exporters such as Algeria and Egypt shifting to supplying their own growing domestic energy demand. Growing security risks, particularly apparent in the chaos of Libya, also takes a toll on new investments.

Volatility in North Africa, in fact, poses as much of a risk to European energy security as the Ukraine crisis does, said Laszlo Varro, head of the International Energy Agency’s gas, coal and power division.

“North Africa and the Middle East are very credible competitors in the category bad news," he said. "In fact, the largest gas supply disruption in Europe in history had nothing to do with Russia and Ukraine, it was the disruption of Libyan supplies to Italy. And by the way, that gas was mainly replaced by Russian gas.”