Andris Piebalgs, the European Union’s energy commissioner, likes to joke that the best thing that happened to him in his job was when Gazprom restricted gas deliveries to Ukraine at the begining of 2006, leading to fears of shortages across the EU. European consumers used to being able to cook, or run a bath, without thinking suddenly had an apprehension of the vast global industry that supplied them, and the complex network of commercial and political relationships that kept it running.

In the US, the inexorable rise in petrol prices this decade to $3.20 a gallon in the spring had a similarly salutary effect. Energy security, a dead issue during the 1990s, has emerged a pressing concern of governments and businesses.