Ukraine's Yatsenyuk Urges EU to Block Russia's South Stream Pipeline

Ukraine's Acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk urged the European Union on Tuesday to block Russian South Stream gas pipeline, currently under construction and expected to transfer Russian oil and gas to central and southern Europe via Black Sea bypassing Ukraine.

"We call on the European Union to block the South Stream. Ukraine is a reliable transit country, we have fulfilled and will continue to fulfil our obligations," Yatsenyuk told the parliament.

Aiming to diversify Russia's gas supply routes to Europe due to Ukrainian gas debt of $3.5 billion, which Russia fears may lead to possible transit disruptions, Russian gas giant Gazprom launched the pipeline construction in the Russian city of Anapa in 2012 and expects to complete the first line in late 2015. In total, the 15.5-billion-euro project will include four 930-kilometer long parallel lines.

Commercial deliveries through this pipeline to Europe are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2016, with the pipeline becoming fully operational in 2018.

Russia annually pumps about 100 billion cubic meters of gas to European countries via Ukraine, which makes up 80 percent of its total gas supplies to Europe.

I have mentioned the South Stream Project many times. This bypasses Ukraine, and when completed will make Ukraine largely irrelevant in the bigger Geo-political energy scheme of things.

The IMF is counting on Ukraine getting the Russian gas transmission fees, among other things, to pay back the huge loans they are giving them.

There are other political considerations as well. The Romanians chose the South Stream extension through Romania to Italy, over the Saudi-backed pipeline through Syria.

Ukraine is currently the gas delivery monopolist in the South. Naturally, it would love to remain such a monopoly. Equally naturally, many other countries would love to get a piece of that action. Transport of gas in pipelines is the easiest way to earn the easiest money in existence. Yatsenuk's request goes counter to interests of many European countries. Given that Ukraine is not in position to demand anything, and nothing to trade, the likeliest outcome is that nothing will change, and the South Stream will be on course.

Europe will not go as far as inconveniencing itself to help someone else, who is not even an EU member, in their disagreements with another country. After all, when winter comes it will be European voters who will be asking their governments why they are freezing. It would be mighty hard to tell them that they are freezing in order to symbolically support the fight of some faraway country that they cannot care less about. "Symbolically" - because just a couple weeks ago Putin was in China, and China, essentially, bought all the gas that Russia has for sale. If less gas goes to EU, more will go to China. China has lots of USD to spend. This will, obviously, starve the Europe (by Europeans' own hands) and help strengthen the Russia-China bloc.

Along that same line of thought:

BEIJING, June 3 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and China are expected to cooperate in the monetary policy sector, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Tuesday.

“This issue will be discussed in the framework of the meeting with the chairmanship of the national Bank of China, and consider the cooperation issues in the sector of monetary policy will be considered,” Siluanov said.

A report from the World Bank’s International Comparison Program earlier this year estimated that China could topple the US economy as the world’s biggest in 2014. The two countries, both members with the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have long been vying to replace the US dollar as Number One global exchange currency.

Siluanov’s visit to China comes on the heels of President Putin’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Shanghai this May, where the two leaders signed a fresh package of financial cooperation accords in what many experts believe to be a clear sign of Russia’s growing proximity with China.

On Tuesday, the Russian financial chief is meeting with a panel of Chinese investors to weigh up the outlooks for mutual investment programs. They are also expected to sign a cooperation agreement for closer ties between the Russian and Chinese treasury departments.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140603/190321552/Russia-China-Agree-on-Cooperation-in-Monetary-Policy.html

South Stream gas pipeline, currently under construction and expected to transfer Russian oil and gas to central and southern Europe

OIL???

It is helpful when the author points out early in their writing they don't understand the topic. It keeps us from wasting time discussing their writing.

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