Comparative Analysis of Russian and Ukrainian Gas Transit Powers

With increasing demand for natural gas, pipeline infrastructure started playing even more important role for transit countries in the Eurasian gas supply chain. High degrees of interdependence that pipelines entail succeeded to prevent long-term gas supply disruptions in the region. It, however, could not discourage energy actors from causing short-term supply cuts to influence the decision making of other players. Using energy as a weapon too frequently forced gas producers to invest in alternative pipeline projects to diversify their dependence on a single transit country. As a result both Russia as a transit country for Central Asian natural gas and Ukraine as a transit country for Russian energy resources started gradually loosing their transit leverage. This paper aims to analyze changing dynamics of Russian and Ukrainian gas transit powers over the last two decades.