Putin has one last chance to blackmail Europe into submission

As a way of using social media channels, it was at least on-brand.

While most companies post colourful pictures of new products, contented customers and smiling staff, Russia’s state owned energy giant Gazprom appears to mix in veiled threats and bullying hints.

Over the last few days, it has taken to Twitter and Telegram to issue a dark warning that Europe is still threatened by energy shortages.

It would, of course, be easy to dismiss this as self-serving corporate gangsterism. And yet it also contains an uncomfortable grain of truth. We were very lucky to get through last winter without blackouts across Europe, and we are running out of time to defuse the “gas bomb” that could still blow up the economy.

With the blossoms on the trees, thermostats turned down and hot water bottles back in the cupboard, we could simply put the energy crisis behind us. We survived the winter without the blackouts, rationing, or the school and factory closures which throughout November and December were just a cold snap away.

And yet, if anyone thought the crisis was over, Gazprom is there to remind us that Vladimir Putin’s energy supplier is still a force to be reckoned with.

Europe’s gas storage facilities were already down to 60pc of its capacity, it pointed out, and will have to be refilled over the months ahead. “This will be very difficult to do, given the politically motivated decisions aimed at refusing to import Russian pipeline gas. The volume of gas available on the European market will be greatly affected by competition for LNG,” Gazprom said.

True, Gazprom is not exactly a neutral source of information. Europe managed to wean itself off Russian gas more quickly than anyone expected when the Russian army moved across the Ukrainian frontier 14 months ago, and with less disruption.

This has, thus far, enabled certain countries to maintain robust support for Kyiv. The lights were not switched off. The offices and schools stayed open. And the economy kept functioning. And yet, for all the bullying, there is still an element of truth in the point Gazprom is making. As Putin will well know, we got lucky last winter. We cannot guarantee that good fortune will hold.

Story continues

There were three reasons why we managed to muddle through the closure of the Russian pipelines.

First, temperatures were relatively mild. Since the end of last September, average temperatures in Germany, Europe’s largest gas consumer, have been 25pc or 1.58 degrees Celsius above normal, according to data from Refinitiv.

In the Swiss Alps, it was so warm there was too little snow for the ski resorts, and across the continent it was warmer than usual. But we were just one ‘Beast from the East’ away from serious shortages, and we certainly can’t count on mild weather two years running (indeed, simple averages would suggest we are due a cold one).

Next, extra supplies from Qatar and, most of all, the US helped by a booming fracking industry, meant there may have been more LNG on the market. And yet, with a recovering global economy, and more demand from Asia, we shouldn’t count on that either.

Finally, with the war raging, companies and consumers were willing to make savings, with many cities switching off Christmas lights, and some factories, especially in the heartlands of German heavy industry, switching to alternative fuels even if they cost more. This may not continue.

We cannot rely on luck alone to keep the lights switched on. And despite measures taken to limit dependence on Russian gas, it remains the case that in Slovakia, Estonia, Poland and Germany it accounts for over half of all natural gas imports.

When Russia curbed pipeline supplies to Europe last year, the scramble to source alternative supplies led to a surge in prices and massively exacerbated the cost of living crisis. Last winter, many European nations threw colossal sums of money at the issue, running up vast deficits to secure LNG supplies on a tight global market.

Over the last two decades, the British government has shamefully neglected our energy security. The state has meddled in the market to the point that it scarcely resembles a market anymore with subsidies, schemes and taxes. And this has left us exposed.

If there is a cold winter, if demand surges back, if the LNG market tightens, if still weather takes out wind power, or if France’s crucial nuclear power plants need more repairs, or face strikes, we could soon find ourselves once again discussing blackouts and rationing.

Successive UK governments have indulged the most extreme wing of the climate change movement to allow our North Sea oil and gas industry to be run down when there are still supplies sitting under the seabed. We have imported gas which may have been sourced via less environmentally friendly processes. And we have imposed punitive windfall taxes to deter the few people still willing to invest in the sector. North Sea oil and gas is now taxed at an effective rate of 75pc.

President Biden, hardly a hard-right reactionary, has approved new oil wells in Alaska. Yet we can’t approve them here. We have re-imposed a blanket ban on fracking even though we have rich seams of shale gas in the North of England, pandering to a mix of net zero ideologues, Nimbys and renewable energy promoters.

Alberta in Canada has not been convulsed by earthquakes despite having a huge fracking industry. And we are progressing so painfully slowly with building new nuclear power stations that it may be the end of the century before any start pumping any electricity into the grid. Our reliance on foreign energy is hardly some accident. It is the result of a series of deliberate political decisions – and all of them, as it happens, have been the wrong ones.

We just about managed to keep the lights switched over winter – but it came at a cost. It could have been much worse, and as Gazprom has darkly reminded us, the crisis is not over yet.

Fixing the roof while the sun is shining is the oldest cliche in the political playbook. But over the course of the next six months we should be learning the lesson of last year – and making sure we have far more secure energy supplies by the time it gets cold again.