At first glance the story had a tolerable if not quite a happy ending. For a moment this week Europeans shivered at the prospect of a winter of disrupted gas supplies. They were confronted with the long obvious, but wilfully unacknowledged, reality that most of Europe depends on the good will of Vladimir Putin?s Kremlin to keep warm. Then, just as the chill set in, Russia and Ukraine swerved to avoid a collision. The rest of us could turn up the central heating and fret again about climate change.

Would that were so. A first draft of history may well view the fight between Moscow and Kiev over the price of Russian gas as an adjunct to the power struggle between Mr Putin and Ukraine?s Viktor Yushchenko. A more reflective judgment may see it as the first skirmish of an era in which the scramble for hydrocarbons became a prime threat to global stability. Either way, energy security, or more accurately, insecurity, has forced its way up the geopolitical agenda.