The Energy Charter And The Energy Game Between Russia And Europe

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, especially in the new century, Russian energy cooperation with European Union (mainly oil and gas) has become closer. This is determined by the supply and demand, geopolitics, energy policy of both sides.EU has huge demand for world's energy, especially oil and gas. In its traditional oil and gas places, such as North Sea and Norway, the production is declining. Therefore, as the world heavily rely on energy imports and consumption of external areas, EU has been very concerned about its energy supply safety. In addition to striving to create a unified internal energy market, the EU has also been very concerned about the external energy supply and security , and developed the Energy Charter Treaty in early of 1990s to guide the EU's internal and external(mainly Central and Eastern Europe areas )energy cooperation, strive to achieve a common energy diplomacy. As the special geographical features in oil and gas production and transportation, the EU can not close eyes without paying attention to one of the main energy origin - Russia. In many issued energy regulations and strategies, the European Union has the implementation of energy import diversification and optimizing energy structure as the main objective of the EU energy policy. The EU believes that, establishing a strategic energy partnership with Russia is conducive to the realization of these goals. Working closely with Russia in energy cooperation is identified as one of the core content of EU's energy strategy in the new period.Russia has enormous oil and gas resources and export potential, it is necessary to adjust the energy strategy, implementing a full range of energy diplomacy to achieve its economy recovery and revitalization in all aspects of a powerful nation. As Russia's traditional energy sales markets and the world's major consuming regions, European Union was taken as one of the priorities of Russian energy diplomacy. At the same time, Russia paid great attention to protect its strategic interests in energy diplomacy. Although the Russian government signed the "Energy Charter" in 1994, because of the domestic stakeholders' discontent on the content of the Treaty and related provisions, its parliament has not approved it yet. Moreover, in recent years, Russia has made initiative to EU to develop new energy laws and regulations and try to become the makers of rules of the game.On analysis of the Energy Charter's origin, this paper is going to introduce Russian-European energy cooperation process, analyze their own energy interests, predict the prospects of signing Energy Charter in the new situation, and finally put forward the inspiration of energy cooperation between Russia and Europe for China.This paper is divided into three parts: The first part is to analyze and interpret the Energy Charter, and introduce its emergence and development. The second part focuses on analysis of current situation of EU-Russia energy cooperation, and the different approaches toward Energy Charter's cooperation mechanism of the two sides. The third part will predict the future of EU-Russia relationship and the signing of Energy Charter with the current EU-Russia situation. The last part of this article will analyze the inspiration and Significance of energy game between Russia and Europe for China energy cooperation.