The European Commission yesterday proposed an ambitious plan to merge the energy markets of the 28-country bloc in a move billed as the sector’s biggest shake-up in half a century.
The plan would intensify efforts to open a “southern gas corridor” to bring pipeline gas from Central Asia, and perhaps eventually the Middle East, to ease the continent’s reliance on Russian gas.
The energy “blueprint”, put forward by Maros Sefcovic, the vice president in charge of energy policy at the EC, the Brussels-based executive branch of the European Union, contained proposals to fully integrate the energy markets of the EU’s member countries, a process that has been moving along gradually for decades.
“This is a broad statement of intent at the very top level in Brussels,” said Arno Behrens, the head of energy research at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.
“It is attempting to bring energy policy back to the top of agenda as the EU has not been converging toward a common energy policy but diverging in many respects, including doing individual national deals with Russia,” Mr Behrens notes.
“To reduce dependence on Russia a common voice is needed.”
The EC’s proposals face a long process before they can come to fruition. The discussion timetable alone runs to 2019, noted Mr Behrens
The proposals would need to be put in the form of legislation and have to hurdle both the European Parliament and the EU’s 28 national governments, a process that would take years and would be likely to face as much resistance as past efforts.
But the document provides a framework for the executive and the member states to set out energy priorities, especially for plans to continue to “decarbonise” the continent’s energy system, increase the share of renewable energy supplies, integrate power grids, and improve security of supply.
The EU is highly dependent on external sources of energy, particularly Russian gas, a problem that reached crisis point in the winter of 2009, when Russia cut off gas to Europe for weeks because of a dispute with Ukraine. This has again come to the fore amid the Ukraine-Russia territorial conflict.
The EU imports 53 per cent of its energy at a cost of around EUR 400 billion a year and, taken as a bloc, it is the largest energy importer in the world. Six member states depend on Russia’s Gazprom for their entire gas imports and “therefore remain too vulnerable to supply shocks,” the EC report said.
The EU successfully blocked Russia’s attempt to increase its stranglehold when its intense lobbying forced the cancellation in Decmeber of Russia’s proposed South Stream gas pipeline, which would have dominated gas supplies into southern Europe.
The centrepiece of Europe’s “southern corridor” dream had been the Nabucco pipeline. But since the decision in early in 2013 by Azerbaijan not to supply gas from its Shah Deniz field, that project has looked in jeopardy unless alternative supplies can be secured.
Given the politics of the region, supplies from Iraq or Iran seem unlikely in the foreseeable future, analysts say.
But the Middle East’s share of Europe’s gas market should increase significantly at the expense of Russia’s anyway, mainly through the large network of liquefied natural gas intake terminals built, or planned for construction. EU LNG imports from all sources will grow from 31 per cent next year to 48 per cent in 2040, according to the Brookings Institute, a think tank. Meanwhile, the share of Caspian and Middle Eastern countries (Azerbaijan, Iran, and Iraq) will nearly triple, from 3 per cent in 2015 to 10 per cent by 2040, with the share of pipeline gas supplies from Russia falling from 31 per cent in 2015 to 23 per cent by 2040, Brookings says.
amcauley@thenational.ae
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FIXTURES (all times UAE)
Sunday
Brescia v Lazio (3.30pm)
SPAL v Verona (6pm)
Genoa v Sassuolo (9pm)
AS Roma v Torino (11.45pm)
Monday
Bologna v Fiorentina (3.30pm)
AC Milan v Sampdoria (6pm)
Juventus v Cagliari (6pm)
Atalanta v Parma (6pm)
Lecce v Udinese (9pm)
Napoli v Inter Milan (11.45pm)
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LA LIGA FIXTURES
Friday Athletic Bilbao v Celta Vigo (Kick-off midnight UAE)
Saturday Levante v Getafe (5pm), Sevilla v Real Madrid (7.15pm), Atletico Madrid v Real Valladolid (9.30pm), Cadiz v Barcelona (midnight)
Sunday Granada v Huesca (5pm), Osasuna v Real Betis (7.15pm), Villarreal v Elche (9.30pm), Alaves v Real Sociedad (midnight)
Monday Eibar v Valencia (midnight)
Common OCD symptoms and how they manifest
Checking: the obsession or thoughts focus on some harm coming from things not being as they should, which usually centre around the theme of safety. For example, the obsession is “the building will burn down”, therefore the compulsion is checking that the oven is switched off.
Contamination: the obsession is focused on the presence of germs, dirt or harmful bacteria and how this will impact the person and/or their loved ones. For example, the obsession is “the floor is dirty; me and my family will get sick and die”, the compulsion is repetitive cleaning.
Orderliness: the obsession is a fear of sitting with uncomfortable feelings, or to prevent harm coming to oneself or others. Objectively there appears to be no logical link between the obsession and compulsion. For example,” I won’t feel right if the jars aren’t lined up” or “harm will come to my family if I don’t line up all the jars”, so the compulsion is therefore lining up the jars.
Intrusive thoughts: the intrusive thought is usually highly distressing and repetitive. Common examples may include thoughts of perpetrating violence towards others, harming others, or questions over one’s character or deeds, usually in conflict with the person’s true values. An example would be: “I think I might hurt my family”, which in turn leads to the compulsion of avoiding social gatherings.
Hoarding: the intrusive thought is the overvaluing of objects or possessions, while the compulsion is stashing or hoarding these items and refusing to let them go. For example, “this newspaper may come in useful one day”, therefore, the compulsion is hoarding newspapers instead of discarding them the next day.
Source: Dr Robert Chandler, clinical psychologist at Lighthouse Arabia
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Cry Macho
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam
Rating:**
Gertrude Bell's life in focus
A feature film
At one point, two feature films were in the works, but only German director Werner Herzog’s project starring Nicole Kidman would be made. While there were high hopes he would do a worthy job of directing the biopic, when Queen of the Desert arrived in 2015 it was a disappointment. Critics panned the film, in which Herzog largely glossed over Bell’s political work in favour of her ill-fated romances.
A documentary
A project that did do justice to Bell arrived the next year: Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum’s Letters from Baghdad: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Gertrude Bell. Drawing on more than 1,000 pieces of archival footage, 1,700 documents and 1,600 letters, the filmmakers painstakingly pieced together a compelling narrative that managed to convey both the depth of Bell’s experience and her tortured love life.
Books, letters and archives
Two biographies have been written about Bell, and both are worth reading: Georgina Howell’s 2006 book Queen of the Desert and Janet Wallach’s 1996 effort Desert Queen. Bell published several books documenting her travels and there are also several volumes of her letters, although they are hard to find in print. Original documents are housed at the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle, which has an online catalogue.
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