Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that the European Union should finally start a serious discussion about the way how to decrease Europe’s energy dependence on Russia. In the wake of recent sanctions against Moscow, the crisis in Ukraine should be a “wake-up call” for those EU countries that are mostly dependent on energy supplies from Moscow. European leaders discussed this issue with US President Barack Obama during the EU-US summit. Europe thus could buy more shale gas from the United States. This goes in line with the recent position of G7 leaders that have jointly agreed to work on decreasing the dependence of Russia on oil and natural resources.
Premier Cameron thinks that the Ukrainian crisis is in fact an opportunity for Europe to diversify its supplies of natural resources. He adds that energy security should be a number one on the political agenda, but it is still not even though a number of EU member states are almost or precisely 100 percent reliant on Russian oil and gas. Britain itself buys only a small portion of natural resources from Russia yet about a third of EU’s supplies are from Russia and about 40 percent of oil is transported through Ukraine.
The environmental advocacy, Greenpeace, disagrees with Prime Minister Cameron saying that his suggestion is but a cynical attempt to use the crisis in Ukraine. In contrast, EU leaders seem to have been motivated by Mr Cameron’s idea. Chancellor Merkel has already asked President Obama to relax the conditions for export of American oil to Europe. This could be done via the proposed free-trade agreement between the US and the EU, which would be the world’s biggest deal of its kind, dubbed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
