Panel:
Energy and the MENA: State power, international relations, development
This panel investigates the interconnections between energy and state power, international relations, and societal developments in the MENA. This can include past energy transitions, the emergence of rentier states and geopolitical conflict around energy in the region, including the logistics of energy trade and the role of maritime security. Contemporary development perspectives that entail energy diversification into nuclear energy and renewables and the growing role of natural gas and petrochemical value chains are also welcome.
Article:
“German Energy Security and Algerian Gas: Roads not Taken (1972–82), Foreign Policy Roles and Current Horizons”
Eckart Woertz/ German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg and University of Hamburg, eckart.woertz@giga-hamburg.de
Sven Holger Brünner, University of Hamburg and Bundeswehr Command and Staff College, Hamburg, svenholgerbruenner@
Abstract
The 1970s marked a decisive shift in (West) German energy policy. Oil’s domination of the European country’s energy mix saw it go from single-percentage figures in the early 1950s to making up more than half of said mix in the course of two decades. Perceived as a vulnerability, the development of natural gas and nuclear energy was accelerated to diversify energy sources accordingly, with knock-on effects for domestic manufacturing and foreign policy. This article analyses the role Algerian gas played in that diversification process and juxtaposes it with Germany’s growing dependence on Soviet gas, its policies towards Arab energy producers and its assertiveness in the face of counterproposals by the United States that favoured supplies from the North African country over Soviet ones. Based on German archival material and using foreign policy roles as our analytical lens, we argue that Germany acted not as a mere trading state with predominantly commercial interests. Realist strategic calculations and the instincts of a civilian power to pursue its interests via multilateral institutions all weighed in the balance. Ultimately, Germany voted in favour of Soviet supplies, but that growing dependence came back to haunt it in the 2020s and put natural-gas cooperation with Algeria back on the agenda, this time in a more Europeanised and multilateral framework.