Why Europe's addiction to Russian gas won't be easy to shake

On the world stage, the words "energy security" prompt debates about diversifying supply and decreasing reliance on bad actors, but for Sergiy Makogon, their meaning is more literal: how to keep the network of close to 40,000 kilometres of natural gas pipelines that crisscross his country functioning in the middle of a war.

On the day CBC spoke to him last week, the CEO of Ukraine's Gas Transmission System Operator was busy rerouting a pipeline near the northern city of Kharkiv that was just hit by a missile and reassuring several workers at a compressor station seized by Moscow-backed separatist fighters in Eastern Ukraine. 

He was also struggling to figure out a way to get gas to Mariupol, whose residents have been cut off from heat and electricity since airstrikes damaged a pipeline more than a month ago.

"This is a humanitarian catastrophe right now in Mariupol," Makogon said on the phone from an undisclosed location in western Ukraine, where he and his staff took refuge soon after the start of the Russian invasion.

"We know very well where the pipeline is damaged, but nobody can guarantee for us the safety of our personnel. This city is fully blocked by Russian troops.... So that's why, unfortunately, we cannot restore the gas supply."

Makogon's team is responsible for the high-pressure pipelines that transport 40 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year to Europe.

The network is one link in a complex system of interdependence that keeps the lights on in Europe and provides crucial revenue for Russia. Experts say it won't be easy to unravel but that it faces its greatest threat since the West started importing large amounts of gas from the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

"That system was created with great pride from both sides," said Margarita Balmaceda, a professor of diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and author of several books on Russia's influence in the energy sector.

"Engineers, planners, managers were really excited to create a system … that finally was able to withstand all the political tensions over time, that could overcome the Iron Curtain."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens to upend that precedent, she said, as Europe looks to scale back its dependence on Russian gas and Russia threatens to punish countries that oppose the invasion by using their gas contracts to prop up the ruble.

While Europe's focus has been on how the current crisis impacts its supply, the international pipelines that transit Ukraine also affect how gas moves through the local network Ukrainians rely on for heat and electricity.

Since the Russian invasion began Feb. 25, shelling has damaged several pipelines, compressor stations and distribution points along that interconnected system, said Makogon.

"The majority of damages are related to the low-pressure pipelines because of the very heavy fighting in the cities or close to the cities." 

So far, other than in Mariupol, operators have found alternate ways to deliver gas to damaged areas, he said, but he is increasingly worried about the compressor station in Novopskov. It lies on the route of the Soyuz pipeline that carries gas to Europe through the breakaway region of Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine, where fighting has escalated in recent days.