Russia's New Abbott and Costello Defense

Vladimir Putin -- listen up.

You now have an airtight defense against those who have savaged you ever since you temporarily cut off natural gas shipments to Europe a couple of years ago in a pricing dispute with Ukraine. It would make Abbott and Costello proud.

Last week, Turkmenistan made news by cutting off natural gas supplies to Iran. The Central Asian nation, the runt forever being picked on by neighborhood bullies, had been shipping 23 million cubic meters a day to Iran, but is tired of being short-changed by Russia and Iran for its natural gas and wants more money. Russia is now paying $130 a thousand cubic meters (versus $350 it plans to charge Europe); Turkmenistan presumably wants at least that much from Iran.

Here's where the story gets wind. You see, even though Iran buys natural gas, it also sells it. But this is an incredibly cold winter, and Iranians are freezing. The country needed those Turkmen imports. So it has cut off Turkey, which was supposed to receive 30 million cubic meters a day from Iran but is only getting about 5 million.

Except it's also mighty cold in Turkey. So it has cut off Greece.

The poetic coda? The rescue squad is from Russia. Gazprom, the lightning rod for things that go wrong across Eurasia, is shipping an extra 8 million cubic meters of natural gas a day to Turkey and 1.5 million cubic meters a day to Greece.

Photo: Pirate Alice
Rights: Creative Commons