Nafeez Ahmed reveals how the Russian energy giant Gazprom planned to control Ukraine’s gas and backed Donald Trump due to Putin’s existential fear of net zero
Documents and studies authored by a top advisor to Russia’s energy giant Gazprom – including articles published in Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom’s internal corporate magazine – reveal how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was preceded by an existential fear of the impact of Western climate action on Russia’s oil and gas export economy.
The Gazprom analyses, unveiled exclusively by Byline Times, show how the Russian oil and gas giant saw American and European efforts to accelerate Ukraine’s energy independence from Russia as a fundamental threat that would potentially unravel its entire natural gas business. They also confirm that Gazprom’s preferred American politician is Donald Trump – due to his opposition to the “green agenda”.
In the run-up to Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Gazprom advisor’s analysis confirms, Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to ensure Russia’s energy dominance of Ukraine.
Net Zero is the Threat
The various technical studies and analyses reviewed by Byline Times have been authored by Dr Andrew Konokplyanik, a former deputy minister for fuel and energy who is now an advisor to the Director-General at Gazprom Export LLC. Since 2011, he has been a Russian co-chair in the EU-Russia Gas Advisory Council which advises the Russian Government and EU Commissioners on long-term gas cooperation.
In the years preceding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Konokplyanik published around a dozen academic papers, news articles, and analytical commentaries highlighting how Europe’s commitment to climate action under the Paris Agreement’s ‘net zero’ ambitions, pose a mortal threat to Russia’s oil and gas exports. Two of these were published by Gazprom itself.
On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Konokplyanik published a paper in the Journal of World Energy Law & Business calling for the European Union (EU) to continue importing gas from Russia, but to use it to create hydrogen via methane pyrolysis.
Konokplyanik presented this as a ‘win-win’ scenario that would help the EU “decrease low-carbon development costs” and allow Russia “to further monetise its vast gas resources within export-oriented decarbonisation”.
This paper essentially repeated arguments made by Konokplyanik in November 2021 in an earlier paper published by the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he concluded that humanity is currently undergoing its “seventh energy transition… triggered from the demand-side by climatic considerations aimed at decrease of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions to reach their net zero level.”
He claimed that the EU plan is for Russia to produce hydrogen domestically and export it to the EU through the existing gas transportation network which would require either “costly modernisation” or even “full reconstruction/replacement” – an idea that is “counterproductive for Russia”.
Russia’s preferred alternative is to simply continue exporting gas, and for Europe to take on the job of converting it to hydrogen.
Gazprom Weighs In
But the EU was not interested. Apart from anything else, a landmark study by scientists at Cornell and Stanford universities found that the greenhouse gas footprint of ‘blue hydrogen’ – hydrogen produced from gas – is “more than 20% greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60% greater than burning diesel oil for heat.”
However, in previous Russian-language analyses published by Gazprom in 2021, Konokplyanik doubled down on the importance of the EU committing to this dirtiest form of hydrogen produced from Russian gas. He repeatedly criticised both the US and Europe for moving toward net zero policies that could endanger Russian oil and gas exports.
In an article published in Gazprom’s internal corporate magazine in September 2021, Konokplyanik complained about the joint statement signed three months earlier by the US and Germany in support of Ukraine.
The US-German statement pledged to counter Russia’s “improper (malicious) use” of any of its pipelines including Nord Stream 2 – an expansion to its Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany that would double its capacity – “to achieve aggressive political goals by using energy as a weapon”.
In particular, the Gazprom article reveals Russia’s concerns with the EU’s ‘third energy package’ – a set of regulatory reforms designed to avoid monopoly power over the EU energy system.
Due to their lack of transparency, Gazprom exports to Europe especially Nord Stream 2 don’t fit well into these reforms, which would require the latter to undergo substantial changes in ownership and operation. They would, in other words, dramatically reduce Russia’s ability to exert a monopoly in its gas exports to Europe, and use the pipeline as an instrument of Kremlin aims in Ukraine.
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Gazprom Favours Trump, not Biden
In his Gazprom analysis, Konokplyanik criticised the third energy package for “containing provisions that discriminate against SP-2 [Nord Stream 2]”, and lambasted the US and German commitment to transitioning Ukraine away from dependence on Russian gas.
The analysis was also clear on which American president Gazprom seemed to prefer. It noted that “Under Trump (an opponent of the ‘green agenda’)”, Germany was supposed to build “several receiving terminals for liquefied gas on its territory” and to attract investment for new pipeline infrastructure in central and Eastern Europe to gradually “reduce the demand for energy supplies from Russia”.
In contrast, Konokplyanik wrote, Joe Biden “returned the United States to the global green agenda on the very first day of his presidency”, resulting in outright “American opposition to Russia in Central and Eastern Europe”. Under this scheme, Ukraine would be cemented as a transit route for Russian gas into Europe, going against Gazprom’s efforts to push through other pipelines such as Nord Stream 2.
Trump appears to have been seen as someone Russia could negotiate with – not so, however, with Biden.
Putin’s Fear
The Gazprom analysis went on to cite Vladimir Putin expressing the following concerns about the EU proposals to renegotiate gas transit through the territory of Ukraine: