The Ukraine crisis has reinvigorated European efforts to diversify its natural gas supply sources away from Russia amid reliability concerns, but numerous obstacles stand in that path. “Added to that, Europe is contractually obliged to continue taking delivery of Russian gas. Bernstein makes the point that Gazprom has about 120 bcm of take-or-pay contracts – with companies such as ENI, Edison and RWE – that require Europe to continue paying about $50bn for Russian gas. Many of these stretch way beyond 2020.” [Financial Times]

The Environmental Defense Fund is partnering with 5 large US oil and gas producers in an effort to develop cost-effective methane detection solutions. “The Environmental Defence Fund (EDF) is sponsoring the “Methane Detectors Challenge” alongside Apache, Hess, BG Group, Noble Energy and Southwestern Energy in the push to develop and commercialise low-cost technologies for the oil and gas industry. [Upstream]

As Russia’s economy suffers so does Gazprom’s valuation. “Gazprom is a champion in value destruction,” Ian Hague, founding partner of New York-based Firebird Management LLC, which manages $1.3 billion of assets including Russian stocks, said in an interview yesterday. “It’s not just Gazprom that failed to achieve its goal of increasing market capitalization. It’s Russia who failed. It failed to create an environment where state-owned companies would function as shareholder-owned entities.” [Bloomberg]