Energy security

Abstract

This chapter locates the analysis in the broader energy security debate and to outline the background conditions within which the case studies sit as part of a Eurasian gas supply conundrum. Energy security discourse is marked by the occasions on which the circuitry of interdependencies between producers and consumers has tripped – the events of 1973, 2006, and 2009 provide examples. An uneven distribution of hydrocarbon deposits connected to a patchwork of consumer markets through largely static transit systems establishes a chessboard of entrenched interests that need to be balanced between importers, exporters, policymakers and industry.