• Long et intéressant article sur le conflit UE-Gazprom

    Stalled Gazprom Antitrust Case May Suggest Unease for Energy Sanctions - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/business/international/stalled-gazprom-antitrust-case-may-signal-unease-in-eu-for-energy-sanctions

    Even as Russia and the West keep raising the stakes in their economic sanctions battle, the one commodity that could matter most — Russian natural gas — seems still to be off limits.

    And that is all the more notable because long before Ukraine erupted as a geopolitical crisis, the European Union was aggressively pressing an antitrust case against the Russian state-controlled gas giant, Gazprom. If Europe has grounds to punish Moscow economically, the Gazprom antitrust case might seem to be a prime opportunity.

    Gazprom is suspected of inflating prices and imposing unfair restrictions on gas distribution within Europe, which is heavily reliant on Russian natural gas.

    As recently as last winter, Russia and the European Union’s competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, seemed on the verge of settling. But now the case appears to be languishing. And people close to the inquiry are uncertain whether it will be revived before the autumn, when Mr. Almunia is scheduled to leave office.

    While that prospect is disappointing to small European Union countries like Lithuania that are particularly dependent on Gazprom for their energy needs, the lost momentum of the antitrust case seems to underscore a reality: So far the sanctions war may be more about symbolic actions than imposing far-reaching economic pain on either side.

    Les accusations

    The antitrust investigation began in September 2011 with surprise raids by European officials on Gazprom offices and those of several of its customers in Germany and across Central and Eastern Europe.

    A year later Mr. Almunia opened a formal antitrust case asking three main questions:
    – Was Gazprom blocking gas flows in some parts of Europe?
    – Was the company thwarting its European customers’ efforts to diversify sources of supply?
    – And was it imposing unfairly high charges by linking gas prices to those of oil, rather than basing prices on global natural gas market rates?

    The case concentrated on Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

    Comment déterminer le « prix juste » (ie du marché) en situation d’exclusivité et d’absence d’alternative ?

    But the current case is a challenge to the way Gazprom links its gas prices to oil. That is a hugely sensitive issue for Mr. Putin and Russia, where a significant chunk of the national budget depends on the company’s energy export earnings.

    Oil-linked pricing in Europe goes back decades to the development of gas fields in countries like the Netherlands. Gas was pegged to the price of oil, which gas was replacing for uses like heating.

    But linked pricing began breaking down in Western Europe with deregulation of energy markets and with the availability of new supplies like liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G. But pricing still can be opaque, even in Western Europe, where a complete break of the oil-gas price link has proved difficult for big buyers in countries including Italy.

    Energy experts said Mr. Almunia would be on firm legal ground in demanding that Gazprom rid contracts of clauses that limit Eastern and Central European countries from shipping Russian gas to other destinations within the European Union. But many say that Mr. Almunia may have less standing to challenge Gazprom’s pricing practices.

    “For the Baltic States and Poland I think the commission is on difficult ground,” said Jonathan Stern, the chairman of a natural gas research program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. He said the only viable alternative source of supply for those countries was L.N.G., which usually comes by ship from countries like Qatar and Norway and still is generally more costly than Russian gas carried by pipeline.

    “It’s very unlikely that either the Poles or the Lithuanians or anyone in the Baltics currently and historically could have obtained gas at a cheaper price than the Russians are selling it to them,” Mr. Stern said. “Politicians and people high up in the commission say the fact that prices charged to the Baltic States are higher than the prices charged to Germany proves those prices are anticompetitive. But that is not proof.”