Trading Off
Love and war make strange bedfellows. Politics, ideologies and above all business connections make even stranger connections between countries and their politicians who otherwise have little in common and much that makes them estranged from one another. Israel has been concerned with entreating Moscow to separate itself from Israel's many enemies in the Middle East.Russia's unconcerned support for those who threaten Israel by selling them arms, by building nuclear structures in Iran has been of immense concern to Israel.
Both Israel and Russia ironically enough, have latterly discovered themselves to be spectacularly gifted in energy-involved natural resources. Russia's gas reserves have made its state-owned (after having expropriated it and imprisoned its private owner for his audacity in politically challenging Vladimir Putin) Gazprom the largest exporter of natural gas in Europe.
Gazprom is actually the largest natural gas company in the world and the supplier to European consumers.
Russia's famous/infamous spats with Europe - usually during cold snaps in the winter heating season, over increased prices and decreased gas flows from pipelines leading out of Russia and through Ukraine to Western Europe as both sides squabble over their differences - are legendary. Russia lording it over Europeans desperate to secure their energy source.
Russia has become wealthy through its natural gas sales and as it has become wealthy its pride has been restored past the misery of post-Soviet economic doldrums when it sold off all state enterprises at bargain-basement prices and made a wealthy man of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, while it lasted, until Gazprom was yanked out from under his ownership.
For Israel the discovery of gas riches in its offshore Mediterranean Sea finds is a much later event. Israel's gas deposits with additional gas from its Mediterranean partner Cyprus could have represented a challenge to Russia's dominance of the European-gas-supply market. Now an agreement between Russia and Israel has resulted in the prospect of a new alliance: Gazprom Israel, an Israeli subsidiary of Russia's Gazprom.
That joint enterprise represents both a business and a diplomatic-political win for both Russia and for Israel. Russia will now have a stake in the Mediterranean find, and will be able to increase the gas allowed for export, taking shares in sales of Mediterranean gas to Europe or to Asian markets hungry for new sources of energy. This agreement assures Russia it will retain its valued dominant role in providing gas to Europe.
At the same time, Israel gains enormously because Russia has agreed to stop its sales of high-value arms to Arab nations and to Islamist terror groups. They have signed a military co-operation agreement. Which includes Russian access to Israeli intelligence on Islamic terrorists targeting Russia, and providing Russia with Israel's state-of-the-art UAVs.
Best of all, now that Russia is integrally involved through Gazprom Israel in Israel's Mediterranean offshore gas fields, terror antagonists who menace Israeli drilling rigs and other energy infrastructure may now think again before embarking on destructive assaults.
Since it is not only Israel's resources that will be placed in jeopardy but Russia's as well.
Labels: Energy, Israel, Natural Resources, Political Realities, Russia, Security, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 09, 2012
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