Not real good news for our European friends... Russia, Iran and Qatar made the first serious moves Tuesday toward forming an OPEC-style cartel on natural gas, raising concerns that Moscow could boost its influence over energy markets spanning from Europe to South Asia. In Europe - which counts on Russia for nearly half of its natural gas imports - any cartel controlled by Moscow poses a threat to supply and pricing. Russia, which most recently came into confrontation with the West over its five-day war with Georgia in August, has been accused of using its hold on energy supplies to bully its neighbors, particularly Ukraine. Moscow cut natural gas exports to the former Soviet republic over a price dispute during the dead of winter in 2006 - a cutoff that caused disruptions to European nations further down the pipeline. The 27-nation European Union expressed strong opposition to any natural gas cartel Tuesday, with an EU spokesman, Ferran Tarradellas Espuny, saying: "The European Commission feels that energy supplies have to be sold in a free market."
It gets better. Our own Prime Minister went to Russia last Spring and signed a $50 billion dollar deal with Russia to build LNG plants and process it along the South Shore of the Saint Lawrence River, in Quebec and New Brunswick. They've been trying since the 1960's to pipe in Natural Gas instead of burning stove oil or Hydro, but the transport costs from the west of Canada are too high. Plus there's talk of building a Hydrogen Cell plant. I'm gonna watch how our PM wiggles out of this one.
