The year 2013 was particularly important for energy security in the Balkans, as it brought the news that Caspian natural gas is closer than ever to reaching a region that has been heavily dependent on Russian sources. At the same time, the Russian-led South Stream... MORE

Hungarian MOL and Wintershall of Germany have signed an agreement whereby MOL acquires ownership stakes in 14 offshore oil fields originally licensed to Wintershall in the North Sea. Signed in Budapest on December 13, the agreement is expected to be closed in early 2014 pending... MORE

The Croatian authorities’ pressures on Hungarian MOL (see EDM, November 14) are not a novel development. In 2011, the government (led by the Croatian Democratic Union at that time) imposed a legal cap on MOL’s stake in INA at 49 percent. When the European Union’s... MORE

The Croatian government and the Hungarian MOL oil and gas group have entered into negotiations over the future of INA, the main oil and gas company in Croatia and the largest business entity in the country. MOL (itself Hungary’s largest business group, 25 percent state-owned)... MORE

Steadfast Jazz 2013, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) exercise just held in the three Baltic States and Poland (see accompanying article), marks the start of rebalancing the Alliance’s missions: from an disproportionate concentration on distant, low-intensity though resource-absorbing, and politically ineffective wars (epitomized by... MORE

On November 2–November 9, the NATO Response Force (NRF) conducted the Steadfast Jazz 2013 troop exercise in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, combined with the Baltic Host logistical exercise in the latter three Baltic States. The hosting countries had been awaiting exercises of this type... MORE

In addition to the ten themes of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s October 11 press conference for Russian journalists identified earlier (see EDM, October 18), one more topic deserves to be reflected upon. Lukashenka was unusually harsh on Lithuania. When asked whether he believes that Russia’s... MORE

Moscow has always been extremely sensitive to any indication that the Polish government or Polish organizations are expanding their influence in the post-Soviet space through the support of ethnic minorities in what Russian commentators invariably see as a reprise of the Promethean League program of... MORE

The European Commission encourages Slovakia to emulate Hungary and Poland transiting natural gas supplies from Western Europe to Ukraine. Such deliveries involve re-exporting gas volumes and reverse-using transit systems. Following German RWE Supply & Trading, some other European companies may well also consider selling gas... MORE

To reduce its dependence on Gazprom’s supply monopoly, Ukraine has recently initiated the procurement of natural gas from European gas-trading companies. RWE (Rheinisch-Westfaelisches Elektrizitaetswerk, Germany’s second-largest energy conglomerate) has become the first major European company to deliver gas to Ukraine (see EDM, April 1).The European... MORE