Russia has lost the European oil and gas market, and won’t get it back - analyst Mariia Zolkina

Mariia Zolkina, an analyst at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, who worked as an expert in Qatar for more than two months on Al Jazeera, shared her perspective with Espreso.

"My advice: in interacting with these countries, there is a real need to focus on very rational, material types of cooperation. Oil and gas being the top priority. Why does this matter to us? Because the sooner Europe finds alternative gas suppliers, the sooner the gas embargo will be in place and Russia’s economy will be razed to the ground due to this fall in income. Russia will not be able to redirect the Russian gas it currently supplies to the EU. The European Union is the largest export market for Russian gas, the most important market for the Russian Federation (more than 40% of Russian gas goes there). But how quickly Europe will be able to abandon Russian gas depends on how quickly the countries of the Persian Gulf, and primarily Qatar, will be able to provide new volumes and redirect resources to Europe," Mariia Zolkina said.

She called the increase in oil production another important task that needs to be solved in the Middle East. "Increasing production is necessary in order to bring down the price and break all these benefits that Russia receives from the high price that comes with limited supplies. And we are not talking about short-term goals, because European oil and gas contracts are concluded for at least 10 years. This means that Russia, having lost the European oil market, will not get it back. A new supplier entering the market will be assured of oil supply contracts for the next 10-15 years. Russia will definitely exit this market, and other players in the sector should be eager and enthusiastic about this chance to enter the market. For example, Qatar, which has already planned to increase production by more than 40%.

Russian oil (especially from the North Sea) technically functions like a perpetual motion machine. If you stop production, energy experts say, the field becomes unusable. And if you continue to use it, but have nowhere to transport the oil, you won’t continue to use it. This means that Russia should be put in a dead end and that can be done at the expense of alternative suppliers, in particular those in the Persian Gulf," Zolkina emphasized.

She also said that Ukraine would benefit from further cooperation between the EU and the Persian Gulf countries on energy issues, because this would give the European Union the political freedom to draw a line with Russia. This kind of cooperation would also enable Ukraine to purchase additional volumes of gas and oil.