Europe's gas crisis: How did we get here?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're taking the long view on Europe's energy headache. For decades, Russia has been using its vast natural gas reserves as a powerful political tool. So what can the past teach us about the current crisis? Vivienne Nunis speaks to the author and journalist Oliver Bullough who's been following the gas trail from the USSR to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Also in the programme, Ajit Niranjan reports from the German coastal resort of Lubmin, where the Nord Stream pipelines transporting Russian gas to Europe come to an end. What do people there make of a future without Russian gas? Producer: Carmel O'Grady. Image: Part of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Credit: Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on Business Daily, the energy source on everyone's lips, gas.
0:06.1	The gas situation...
0:08.0	Significantly reduce our gas imports from Russia.
0:11.4	Collectively cease the dependence on Russian oil and gas.
0:15.5	I'm Vivienne-Noon-2.
0:17.6	I'm Vivienne Nunes, and today we're taking an in-depth look at moving gas across Europe,
0:23.3	the pipelines, the tolls and the threats.
0:26.8	We'll hear how Russian gas became a political tool for Moscow long before the current crisis.
0:33.4	The next time the gas contract came up for negotiation, they doubled the gas price that Ukrainians had to pay.
0:39.2	The Ukrainian government refused and demanded a reduction in price, and so the Russians just cut off the gas.
0:45.0	And we'll find out what life without Russian gas could mean for communities in Germany at the end of the pipeline.
0:53.9	Nord Stream 1 brought all of us here in the village
0:55.9	relatively far because we were all indirectly involved somewhere
0:59.2	during the construction phase.
1:01.2	If Nord Stream 2 doesn't come, then there'll be cuts.
1:04.8	Then there'll be an end.
1:07.9	That's Business Daily from the BBC.
1:12.9	Let's begin in the 1970s, amid the bitter rivalry of the Cold War.
1:19.3	The lines are sharply defined.
1:21.1	The East-West struggle embraces the fate of Cuba.
1:23.9	And here in East Berlin, the red propaganda machine is in high gear to show support.
1:27.9	The Soviet Union, which had been a great economic player in the years after World War II,
	...

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