By Jin Jing

The European Union (EU) has begun to mull measures to avoid a freezing winter potentially without gas heating, amid continuing rows between Russia and Ukraine over gas prices.

The EU had previously tried to stay out of the spat that began on Jan.1, but when Russia shut off all gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine on Wednesday, the bloc, which imports about a quarter of natural gas from Russia, apparently felt compelled to get involved.

Countries including Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Turkey have suffered a complete shutoff of gas supplies from Russia, while France, Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary have reported substantial drops in gas deliveries from there.

The International Energy Agency has warned that Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Turkey would have difficulty providing adequate electricity and heating to their citizens if the cold weather and gas disruptions continued next week.

"It is unacceptable that the EU's gas supply security is being taken hostage to negotiations between Russia and Ukraine," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday, noting that the two countries' reputation as reliable partners to the EU is "at stake".

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon also described the cutoff of Russian gas supplies to Europe as "totally unacceptable".

"The current situation represents a challenge for all of Europe... The non-observance of contracts signed is totally unacceptable," said Fillon in a statement.

Among the options, the EU is considering sending monitors to ensure the stable gas flow from Russia.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said both Russian gas monopoly Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz and their government representatives had been invited to a meeting in Brussels on Thursday, which will set technical conditions for a monitoring mission.

"If this is agreed, nothing will stand in the way for transit supplies to be restored," Topolanek said, warning that the EU would intervene should the dispute fail to be solved by Thursday.

Meanwhile, the EU might even reconsider the role of gas as a logical mid-term alternative to high-polluting coal in the power sector and oil in the heating sector.

"We cannot promote a fuel anymore which is used as a weapon by some countries and certain corporations against consumers," said Stephan Singer, WWF International Director of Energy Policy in Brussels.

The gas cut-off should serve as a wake-up call for the EU to boost energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies, he noted.

Nevertheless, the EU is unlikely to take any drastic measures to test the nerves of Russia as its key energy supplier, some observers said.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Wednesday that the current dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas supply was not a European affair, but an economic issue between Russia and Ukraine.

The EU would be making a mistake if it politicizes the dispute and sees it as a European matter, he said.

The EU presidency may be wise not trying to complicate the "economic issue", considering the strong political undercurrents that came with it, analysts say.

Russia and Ukraine, which is seeking eventual EU membership, have been at odds with each other since the Orange revolution five years ago.

More recently, Russia accused Ukraine of supplying arms to Georgia during the war in August, and has threatened to take this into account in its foreign policies.

On the sensitive energy issue, Ukraine has been trying to picture Russia as a bullying country that uses gas as a political weapon, while Russia has portrayed Ukraine as an unreliable transit nation threatening European energy security.

Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on Jan. 1 after the two countries failed to reach an agreement on gas prices and transit fees for 2009.

The EU, for its part, has repeatedly fallen to victim to such bitter rows. In January 2006, in a similar dispute, Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine. A year later, Russia switched off its gas delivery to Belarus, another important gas transit nation to Europe.

EU countries import about a quarter of its total natural gas needs from Russia, among which 80 percent is shipped through pipelines across Ukraine.

One of the main lessons the EU could learn from the latest dispute may be the need to speed up the construction of an alternative pipeline that bypasses Ukraine, or Belarus.

But Europe will remain a hostage to such disputes that could arise anytime in the future if the region fails to effectively diversify its energy supplies, analysts say

(Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2009)