After Vladimir Putin resumed his war against Ukraine last month, Germany suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, designed to import natural gas from Russia. But even without this pipeline, Germany, like most of Europe, nonetheless depends on Russia for its energy needs—just as the Russian economy depends on energy exports. Dore Gold points out that the Jewish state has a role to play in reducing this dependence, and making economic warfare against Moscow possible:
In late 2021, roughly 40 percent of the EU’s natural-gas imports came from Russia. In early March, President Joe Biden announced a ban on Russian oil and gas imports into the United States. The EU announced, in response, that it planned to reduce its imports of Russian natural gas by two-thirds by the end of 2022. . . . Currently, other suppliers to Europe by pipeline include Norway (22 percent), Algeria (18 percent), and Azerbaijan (9 percent), but they cannot provide a substitute for Russian gas.
The eastern Mediterranean, as a whole, including Israel, has immense gas reserves that have been estimated to reach 10.8 trillion cubic meters of gas, or roughly 5 percent of the world’s gas reserves. This amount of gas has been estimated to be roughly equivalent to 76 years of gas consumption by the EU.
With the anticipated improvement in Israeli ties to Turkey, Ankara could emerge as an export hub for Israeli gas in the future. Thus, in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, there are multiple reasons why the work on the East Med pipeline, [which would bring Israeli, Egyptian, and Cypriot gas to Europe], must be resumed, along with gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, as soon as possible. Moreover, increasing the supply of gas to the West will also help drive down its price, thereby undermining Russia’s ability to fund its war machine in the future.
Read more on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: https://jcpa.org/europes-urgent-need-for-israeli-gas-production/