Eleven days ago in Moscow, about 30 European ambassadors and diplomats sat down for lunch at the Austrian envoy's mansion with the man who sells the continent one-quarter of its natural gas: Alexei Miller. Slightly to their surprise, the chief executive of Gazprom placed a digital recorder in front of him, then spoke for an hour and a half - right through the potato soup and wiener schnitzel. He took two questions, then slipped away. A few hours later, Gazprom put out a press statement about the meeting that would ignite a firestorm.
After some soothing language about how the Russian gas monopoly was a guarantor of European energy security came a thinly veiled threat. Blocking Gazprom's plans to expand its activities in Europe "would not lead to good results". "Not by chance" was Gazprom developing new markets such as China and North America. Competition for energy resources, Mr Miller was quoted as saying, was intensifying. The statement stoked anew the debate over whether Europe was too reliant on Russian energy that has raged since Gazprom cut off gas to Ukraine in a pricing dispute in January. Even the White House weighed in this week, voicing support for securing oil and gas supply routes to Europe from the Caucasus and central Asia that would not pass through Russia. President Vladimir Putin responded with a warning echoing Mr Miller's comments a week earlier, that if Russia faced blocks "to the north, south and west", it would shift its focus of expansion to energy-hungry Asia.
