Foolish Greece Now Joins NATO Gas War

Only
eighteen months ago prospects for a major southern Europe natural gas
pipeline from Russian gas fields across the Black Sea, into Turkey and
on to the Greek-Turkish border was in negotiation between Russian
President Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan. Turkish Stream as it was called,
was proposed in talks in Ankara between Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
in December 2014 after EU economic sabotage had forced Russia to cancel
plans for its South Stream pipeline into Bulgaria and on to the states
of South East and Southern Europe. Now Greece has foolishly decided to
join NATO’s “gas war” against Russia by signing a far more costly
agreement to build the so-called Trans-Adriatic Pipeline to carry gas
from Baku’s offshore Shan Deniz II field across Greece, through Albania
then under the Adriatic to Italy. European gas geopolitics are rapidly
becoming as risky as its oil geopolitics.

On May 17, Alexis Tsipras, Greek
opportunist-in-chief and Prime Minister, signed an agreement in
Thessaloniki to inaugurate the start of construction for the 550 km
Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) through Greece. Tsipras hyped the
estimated $1.5 billion project to the media as “one of the greatest
direct foreign investment projects carried out in Greece.” Present at
the ceremony were European Union bureaucrats as well as high ranking
officials from Greece, Turkey, Albania, Italy and Bulgaria.

Curiously enough, the US State Department was also present, although they are no direct party to EU internal energy agreements. Indirectly,
ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s,
however, Washington has been in the middle of EU energy strategies,
attempting sabotage of Russia’s Gazprom at every chance. The essence of
the EU “gas war” is the US effort, directly via Washington pressure and
by NATO pressure, and indirectly via “friends” in the EU Commission, to
weaken or outright sabotage Russian Gazprom exports to EU markets.

Because of EU “greenhouse gas”
regulations, and Germany’s phasing out of nuclear power, the demand for
natural gas to replace coal and other fuels in the countries of the
European Union will rise dramatically as will its need to import the
gas. In the next four years gas imports will rise from the present of
45% of total EU gas consumption to approximately 65% by 2020.

The Foolish TAP

The Trans-Adriatic Pipeline is a portion
of a far more expensive and longer pipeline chain that should link the
Azerbaijan Shah Deniz II offshore gas field to the EU, bypassing Russian
gas options. TAP is to bring Azerbaijani gas from Shah Deniz-2 to EU
markets through Greece and Albania. TAP shareholders include
Azerbaijan’s state energy group, Socar (20%), BP (20%), Italy’s Snam
(20%), Fluxys (19%), Enagas (16%) and Axpo (5%). Of the total length of
TAP, 878 km, only 550 km will pass through the northern part of Greece,
215 km through Albania, 105 km through the Adriatic Sea and 8 km through
Italy. The debt-strapped, economically depressed Greek government was
forced to give the gas companies of TAP AG a 25-year tax break to TAP.

TAP will bring the Azeri gas by way of a
far longer pipeline called Trans Anatolian pipeline (Tanap). Tanap is a
1,850-km pipeline that is supposed to carry 16 billion cubic meters
annually from the BP-operated Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea at
an estimated cost of a whopping $10 billion. It would go from the
Georgia-Turkey border to Turkey’s border with Greece. There it would
join TAP, which runs across Greece and Albania and under the Adriatic
Sea, on to a gas hub in southern Italy.

TAP and Tanap are part of the EU
Commission’s so-called Southern Gas Corridor, the most complex gas value
chain ever developed in the world according to the TAP AG consortium
which now will build the Greek section. It stretches over 3,500
kilometres, crossing seven countries and involving more than a dozen
major energy companies. If completed by 2020 it should deliver some 10
bcm/year of Azeri gas to the EU.

Gazprom’s Poseidon

This past February, 2016 the same Alexis
Tsipras had been party to quite another signing ceremony. A “Memorandum
of Understanding” was signed on February 24 to develop a gas pipeline
project between Greece and Italy, enabling the potential realisation of a
southern route for Russian gas supply to Europe. The agreement was
signed by Alexey Miller, CEO of Gazprom, Italy’s Edison CEO Marc
Benayoun and Theodoros Kitsakos, the CEO of Greece’s DEPA public gas
supply corporation.

The Gazprom-Greek-Italian Poseidon was
designed to present another option to bring Russian gas into southern EU
states after Washington pressure on the Brussels EU Commission forced
Bulgaria to abandon plans to land Russian gas in a project named South
Stream, a vastly lower cost pipeline route than the TAP-Tanap-Southern
Gas Corridor in December, 2014.

The South Stream pipeline was designed
to carry 63 bcm/year of Russian gas across the Black Sea to Bulgaria,
and via Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia, to Italy. By contrast, the TAP EU
alternative would deliver a mere 10 bcm/year and even that is
questionable. That’s strange economics for an EU that is in the midst of
a severe economic crisis. The proposed Russian alternatives would have
cost €15.5 billion to bring some 63 bcm/year and the US-backed
TAP-Southern Gas Corridor, for construction costs of $45 billion will
bring only 10 bcm/year.

The same month Russia announced
abandoning South Stream, in December 2014, Putin and Erdoğan agreed to
discuss another Gazprom alternative to solve the gas demands of South
East Europe and Italy. It was dubbed Turkish Stream and would have
brought Russian gas via a pipeline under the Black Sea through a short
stretch in Turkey to the border of Greece. The shooting down by the
Turkish Airforce of a Russian jet in Syrian airspace in November, 2015
led to a freeze in Russian relations with Turkey and the end at least
for the time, of South Stream.

The estimated cost of Russia’s proposed
South Stream, which Washington sabotaged, and of its alternative
,Turkish Stream, were both around €15.5 billion, one-third of the
enormous $45 billion cost estimated for the TAP-Southern Gas Corridor. For
Washington’s economic warfare strategists, including the State
Department’s neo-con-in-residence, Victoria Nuland, cost is no object so
long as the EU countries must pay.

The February, 2016 Gazprom Poseidon
project envisioned a new option for Russian gas into Greece and southern
Europe. According to reports in the Russian press, Poseidon could link
in a new agreement with Bulgaria to bring Gazprom gas via Bulgaria.

Sergei Pravosudov, director of the
Russian Institute of National Energetics, said the Bulgarian route was
the most advanced option for shipping Russian gas.

New Greek ‘bailout’ to bloc Poseidon

Washington was quick to react to the new
Russian gas import threat with its next round of gas wars. Behind the
curtains of European politics, the place where most deals are done,
Washington put enormous pressure on the Merkel government and other EU
states to organize a new tranche of bailout money for Greece.

On May 25, Germany and other EU
governments made public a decision to give Greece a new bailout tranche
of €10.3 Billion. The Greek people, who under the Tsipras regime get
only more austerity and cuts in their living standard, won’t see a penny
of the money. It will go to service Greek state debt to the European
Central Bank and other foreign creditors. Washington pushed the EU to
make the bailout to keep Greece from getting closer to Moscow with the
Russian Poseidon gas project, according to German media reports.

It seems to have worked. The day after
signing the US-backed TAP agreement, Tsipras announced it was freezing
talks with Russia on its Poseidon alternative. Washington
seems happy. US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a congratulation to
Prime Minister Tsipras, called TAP a “prime example of infrastructure
that enhances European energy security.”
 By that he means security from Russian gas. 

The only problem is that
the gas from Azerbaijan offshore fields is not there. Acute shortages of
gas supply offshore Azerbaijan are forcing the Azeri government and its
state oil and gas group, Socar to look at possible gas imports
from…Russia’s Gazprom. Azerbaijan’s main source of gas for export from
the giant offshore BP-operated Shah Deniz field is already contracted
for export to Turkey and Georgia. BP says gas production will be
stagnant for the next several years. No gas for Greece and Italy.

F. William Engdahl is
strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics
from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and
geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

http://journal-neo.org/2016/06/10/foolish-greece-now-joins-nato-gas-war/