Market Power
Natural Gas in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea Area
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The Eurasian gas market is in drastic change. The two main drivers behind this are decreased consumption in Europe and increasing consumption in China. This created a situation in which, despite all of the political projects, Russia’s importance as an importer and distributor of natural gas from Central Asia has declined, but also one in which the European Union’s ambitious plans to diversify by directly importing gas from Azerbaijan could not be realised. The Central Asian states, especially Turkmenistan, have not yet suffered from the decline: their new major customer is China.
(Osteuropa 7/2013, pp. 45–60)