Europe's Road to Energy Security
In an opinion editorial for The Wall Street Journal, Gary Schmitt, director of the program on advanced strategic studies at the American Enterprise Institute, comments that President Dmitry Medvedev's meetings with his French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris were hardly the epitome of great statesmanship.
However, he believes that, it has "become expected as European governments seek to close the gap between their own shrinking energy resources with those provided by Russian mega-supplier, Gazprom." Schmitt believes that if Europe duplicated the gas supply revolution occurring in the US with the onset of unconventional gas sources, the result could well be a "geo-political game-changer on the Eurasian landmass."
If Europe managed to do so, they could substantially reduce Russia's leverage over its European customers - including Germany and many of its former Warsaw Pact allies. However, failing to do so will "only increase Europe's dependency on precisely those countries whose foreign and domestic policies we find problematic."
Schmitt concludes that exploiting these reserves could produce strategic windfalls that go well beyond simply increasing Europe's energy supplies.