Caspian Report - Issue: 07 - Spring 2014

Shale gas drilling
rig.
Frank Umbach
78
€408 billion on energy imports – six
times more than in 1999, and equal
to 3.9% of GDP. This “alternative”
not only threatens Europe’s energy
supply security and economic competitiveness,
but also creates a much
bigger CO 2
-footprint. If lifecycle
analyses are calculated based on
emissions not only from the production
process, but also from the long
distance transport via thousands of
kilometres of pipelines from Russia,
CO 2
emissions from domestic shale
gas resources would be around 30%
lower. The alternatives to domestically-produced
shale gas would
therefore lead to higher gas prices,
reduced supply security and higher
CO 2
emissions. In other words: the
use of domestically-produced unconventional
gas serves all three major
objectives of the “energy triangle”:
supply security, economic competitiveness
and environmental/climate
protection.
With the increasingly wide price gap
between the North American and
the European oil and gas market
(gas: US$4.5 per million British thermal
units in the U.S. in comparison
with US$9 in Europe and US$18 in
Asia), a “re-industrialization” of energy
intensive and other industries