World's Energy

8 May 2009 - MosNews - Europe should try to overcome its energy dependency on Russia through developing domestic resources, Finland’s President Tarja Halonen has said. “Finland and all the other European countries, we are too dependent on imported energy,” Halonen was quoted by Bloomberg as saying Thursday. “We should be using a broader variety of energy resources.” Russia’s reliability as an energy supplier came into question again in January, when the world’s biggest energy exporter halted gas supplies to Ukraine for two weeks due to a pricing dispute, disrupting transit shipments to at least 20 European countries. In 2006, Russia turned off all gas exports to Ukraine for three days and cut shipments by 50 percent in March 2008 during a spat between the two countries. Europe depends on Russia for a third of its oil and more than 40 percent of its gas, most of which is carried through Ukraine, Bloomberg adds. European Union countries in total import more than half of all energy they consume. Finland relies on Russia for two- thirds of its energy imports by value, including all of the natural gas it uses, according to Statistics Finland. “I hope, we all in Europe hope, that we get a good, reliable system with Russia, because Russia is a very big energy deliverer,” Halonen said during the interview at the presidential palace in downtown Helsinki. “We also need more domestic energy resources” such as sun, wind and bio-thermal.