Quartz: Russia’s invasion of Crimea has caused it to lose the latest battle in the pipeline wars

US president Barack Obama and Europe’s heads of state yesterday sought common ground on new ways to rebuke Russian president Vladimir Putin for annexing Crimea. But they appeared only vaguely if at all aware that they have already won an important skirmish in the West’s centuries-old friction with Russia.

The victory is in what’s known as pipeline politics. For almost two decades, the West and Russia have waged a contest for mastery over a vast swath of the Eurasian continent stretching from Central Asia into Europe. The Russian goal has been to dominate the export of oil and especially natural gas across the region. The West, viewing gas as a Russian political instrument, has sought to break Moscow’s hold on the market.

In 2006, the West won the first battle of the pipeline war when the 1,000-mile Baku-Ceyhan pipeline began to carry Azerbaijani oil to the West, thus shattering Russia’s oil stranglehold on the Caspian Sea. At once, both Central Asia and the Caucasus could export oil through a non-Russian pipeline.

Smarting at the US-led coup, Putin won the next skirmish five years later with Nord Stream, a 750-mile-long natural gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea to Germany. Nord Stream allowed Russia to skirt Ukraine and Poland—with which Russia has had prickly relations—and get its natural gas directly to Europe. At a time the West had begun to worry about Russia’s natural gas dominance in Europe—supplying more than 30% of the continent’s gas—Putin had deepened his grip there.  MORE