Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-22-Speech-1-097"
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"en.20030922.6.1-097"2
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"Madam President, let me start by saying that, two or three years ago, I prepared a report on the European Union’s oil supplies, and I have to admit that what I asked for then was the same thing as what the Commission is calling for now. At that time, I called for the reserves to be increased in order to be on the safe side in the event of supplies being interrupted. That sounds like a plausible thing to do, and that, in any case, was the policy we introduced in 1974. I have, however, learned in the meantime that any benefit from this bears no relation to the cost involved, and the United States’ experience with its Strategic Petroleum Reserve demonstrates that emptying the reserves has remarkably little effect on steeply rising prices. That should give us pause for thought.
What this means is that costs are running high and the benefit to us is relatively small, so I would like to say that I agree with my fellow-Members that this is perhaps not the right road to take. Perhaps we would have something different to say if supplies really had been interrupted; we would probably be in a state of shock and attacking the Commission, asking why it had not responded to a crisis situation of this kind. The only thing is that I see such a situation as highly unlikely. It is far more probable that the greatest risk is the economic one set out by the Commission itself in its proposal, that of prices rising, probably creeping upwards. That is what our main problem will be with gas over the next ten or twenty years. The end result of Europe’s increasing dependency on gas will be a slow rise in prices, which we will be completely unable to influence unless, in twenty years’ time, we have managed to persuade the Russians to be nice to us and reduce them. That will be the real problem. Dealing with it will require, not a directive such as this one, but dialogue with Russia and also with OPEC. That is what the Commission has already made a start on, and that makes a lot of sense.
I would like to close with an observation on the networks. If we extend the networks, as we plan to do, the effect of this will be similar to that of maintaining reserves, as networks – the ones for gas, at any rate – are a sort of reserve, and extending them produces the same effect. That, thank God is a point on which we can agree."@en1
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