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How Russia's gas gets to Europe

Posted by Oliver Wright

Tuesday, 6 January 2009 at 03:22 pm

The Russia/Ukraine gas dispute has got a lot more serious. Russia has now halted all gas supplies via Ukraine to the whole of the Balkans, Turkey and south-eastern Europe. Flows of gas to Austria have dropped by 90 per cent. In Bulgaria, where overnight temperatures dropped to – 15 degrees there are now only two days of supplies left.

To see why the dispute has had such far reaching consequences look at this map produced by the BBC showing the major gas pipelines running across Europe. With Ukraine out of the equation there is now only one pipeline left to supply gas from Russia – but that pipeline is the one that supplies Britain.

click to enlarge