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US Hopes Boom in Natural Gas can curb Putin
The Obama administration is trying to deploy the vast new supply of natural gas in the U.S. as a weapon to lower the influence of the Russian president (Vladimir Putin) over the Ukraine and Europe. The crisis in Crimea has escalated a State Department initiative to use a new boom in American natural gas supplies as a lever against Russia, which supplies 60 percent of Ukraine's natural gas and has a history of cutting off the supply during conflicts. Gazprom (Russia's state-run natural gas company) said it would no longer provide gas at a discount rate to Ukraine. The administration's strategy is to move aggressively to deploy the advantages of it's new resources to undercut Russian natural gas sales to Ukraine and Europe, weakening potential moves by Putin in future years. Although Russia is the world's biggest exporter of natural gas, the U.S, recently surpassed it to become the world's largest natural gas producer, largely because of breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing technology know as fracking. The article points out that for Russia, energy supplies are an important factor for keeping a hold on Ukraine and other former countries of the Soviet Union. However, Russia is obligated by contract to provide natural gas to Western Europe, and Moscow remains highly dependent on Ukrainian pipelines to get there. The State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources has already helped weakened Putin by lowering Ukraine's dependence on Russia for natural gas supplies by finding other ways and places to get this resource from.
This is a good point, and I agree that it is a good idea for the US to help supply oil to countries like Crimea that are under the control of Russia. I think that that would help them to get out of the "rut" that they are evidently stuck in with the whole Russia issue.
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