Finns sock it to Russians

By Rein F. Deer

Date: 11/05/06

A 'private' Russian energy company has offered to build an underwater cable from Russia to Finland to transfer surplus electricity from Sosnovyi Bor nuclear plant to feed constantly increasing Finnish demand for energy.

The Swedes immediately announced their interest in buying affordable Russian voltage, ie they'd like to plug into the Finnish extension.

The mistrustful Finns, who for centuries have noticed that misfortune (or worse) always seems to come from the East, are divided on the matter. The mood of public opinion is that the Swedes should get their own electricity, and arrange a direct cable from St Petersburg to Stockholm.

The Swedes typically want 'morally laundered' energy. This is not quite the same as 'clean' or 'green'. The point is to avoid the taint of the stuff being piped directly from a Chernobyl-type reactor like the one at Sosnovyi Bor.

The Finns' priority is simpler: more Russian-free energy, and a French-German consortium, Framatome, is hard at work building the world's most modern reactor. It is next-door to a unique archipelago - and most of the locals are right behind the project.

Most Finns are unenthusiastic about purchasing more rope to hang themselves from Moscow, preferring to invest in their own 'domestic' nuclear power.

In any event, just how much surplus energy is there, really, in Russia? Maybe less than is usually imagined.

It is all, like everything else in Russia, under Vladimir Putin's control. So you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out whether it is his home-town of St Petersburg or Helsinki which gets switched

off in the event of a mid-winter electricity shortage.

Russia needs European technology and investment more than we need their oil and gas. The Kremlin is bluffing when it claims to have alternative customers in the US and China. There is as yet no pipeline to China yet, and it will take more than five years to build the tankers capable of transporting Russian liquid gas from Russia to US ports.

Notice that Russia is going increasingly nuclear - and making the rest of us dependent on her gas and oil. Meanwhile, Europe does not have a common energy policy, or even a common bargaining front with Russia.

On the contrary: we let Gazprom and other tentacles of the Russian hydra buy up European firms and dealers without even asking for transparency, either in the bidding or the book-keeping. Is it impolite to wonder why not?

When Putin's robbers started to rob Boris Yeltsin's robbers, the fragile bud of transparency was sent to Siberia and is still there, deep-frozen for the foreseeable future.

Comment feature on plans for Russian surplus electricity to be transferred to Finland and Sweden via an underwater cable. Author looks at energy dependency on Russia from a Northern European perspective.