Author:

Keywords:

Energy Security, Eurasia, Security of Demand, Security of Supply, Russia, Securitisation, Energy Producing Countries

Abstract:

Security of supply issues of consuming countries are overrepresented in both political and scholarly de-bate. The article tackles a twofold misunderstanding which is a result of this bias. First, producing coun-tries are expected to mainly focus on security of demand issues because of the abundant availability of energy resources. This distracts the attention from producer countries’ concerns about supply security. Second, the demand side of the energy equation has been largely neglected as a result of focusing on consuming states interests which equate energy security with security of supply. As a result, both securi-ty of supply and demand of producing countries stay largely out of the picture. To address this dual hiatus, the article first unveils the domestic security of supply concerns of the Rus-sian Federation which comparable to consuming countries struggles with Availability, Accessibility, Ac-ceptability and Affordability concerns. The main difference lies within the virtual absence of a geopoliti-cal element of international supplies. Secondly, the study at hand decomposes the security of demand into four constituent parts: Rents, Recovery, Resource Nationalism and Reliability. Moreover, the analysis shows that the global financial crisis increased Russia’s attention to security of demand. This raises questions of how Russia’s future diversification strategies will impact on the EU’s security of supply. The research methodology builds on a computer-based discourse analysis of both 2003 and 2009 Energy Strategies of the Russian Federation.