The EU's energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs has insisted that, while the EU will continue to discuss energy supply issues with Russia, it must also look elsewhere for imports in order to maintain security of supply.
Mr Piebalgs’ comments come in the wake of a stark warning from Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom that it would build its business around markets outside Europe if member states acted to stymie its plans to expand in the downstream segment.
Clearly we need to continue our dialogue with Russia, Mr Piebalgs was quoted as saying by Reuters. Competition should prevail in the market. It’s quite normal for Russia to look to diversify customers and for us to look to diversify suppliers.
There has been speculation recently that the UK government was looking to modify rules on mergers and acquisitions that would hinder any Gazprom bid for its leading gas distributor Centrica. Mr Piebalgs insisted that decisions on takeovers in the energy sector remained the domain of national government.