Cooperation And Controversy On Energy Pipelines Between Russia And The European Union

As the "blood" of the contemporary world economy, energy plays a great significant role for the development of countries in the world. Even the energy has become an important factor impacting a national political stability, economic development and national security.In particular, in the context of globalization of the complicated international energy market, the role of energy has been far beyond providing energy for mankind and it has become the important basis for the development of the domestic economy and external trade, which makes energy play an increasingly important role in international politics and diplomacy.However, the distribution of world resources and energy consumption is usually not the same. For these world's major economies, they have highly developed economy requiring plenty of energy to meet their needs, however, these countries usually have less energy production or slow growth. For these world's leading countries in terms of energy storage, although they have a very rich mix of energy sources, their relatively backward economy makes their energy resources have not been fully used. This leads to the formation of the international energy market and its gradual development.Major transporting channels for international energy trade are energy pipelines and marine vessels. The geographic proximity of the world's largest energy-exporting country——Russia and the world's largest economy——the EU, the pipeline transportation of energy is more important. In addition, the energy trade between Russia and the EU has half a century long history through energy pipelines. Thus, energy pipelines have played an increasingly important role for energy cooperation and development for the bilateral relations between Russian and the EU.It is the extreme importance of energy pipelines that led cooperation and controversy in the area of energy pipeline between Russia and the European Union. The reason for the energy pipeline cooperation is that the bilateral energy trade requires construction and use of energy pipelines of Russia, the EU member states and related areas of energy transportation; the reason for energy pipeline controversy is that the pipeline construction and use of energy could directly influence the energy security, economic security and political security and other core national interests of those relevant countries. For countries'different geographical location, resource endowments and historical experiences, the energy pipeline construction and use will inevitably lead to widespread controversy in relevant countries.In this paper, through the analysis of the importance of the energy pipeline we can find that energy cooperation and controversy relating energy pipelines between Russia and the EU was mainly due to security and trust problem in the energy trade resulted from "energy diversification dilemma". At the same time, both sides are facing the "hidden" problem of trust resulted from dependence issue and the "dominant" problem of trust resulted from "energy diversification dilemma", which make Russia and the EU not only have cooperation in the field of the construction and use of energy pipelines, but also lead to widespread controversy in Russia, the EU and the EU member states, even throughout the world.For the EU's supra-national structure, there are two levels in the energy pipeline cooperation and controversy between Russia and the EU. The one is the level of the European Union; the other is the level of EU member states. Based on the analysis on cooperation and controversy of energy pipelines between Russia and the EU on these two levels, we could get the following conclusions. On the level of European Union, although the EU actively attempt to speak one voice on the energy policy relating to Russia, the EU's common energy policy has many difficulties to overcome. The reason is that both sides has its own ideas relating the "Energy Charter Treaty" and their disagreements are still unsolved, which makes their proposals for establishing four communities far from success. Even, the two sides initiate directly competitive proposal on the energy pipeline construction. On the level of the EU Member States, on the one hand, Russia and the EU member states maintain the traditional relationship in the area of energy trade, or even strengthen the relations, which highlighted in the construction of new energy pipelines in order to enhance bilateral energy cooperation; on the other hand, within the EU, with different endowments of the resources, geopolitical position, economic development level of all EU members states, each of which has its own core national interests,they make their own energy policies relating to Russia and cooperate with Russia bilaterally, which makes Russia has got a considerable advantage in the energy relations with the EU or EU member states.