Earlier this week, EU officials said in unusually staunch terms that they would not buy Arctic oil and gas.
Even if someone (Norway) decided to drill new oil or gas wells in the Barents Sea, which is well above the Arctic Circle, the EU would not purchase it.
The goal is to dissuade investors. It costs many billions of euros to develop gas or oil at scale in the harsh conditions of the far north.
If there is no offtake market in continental Europe, no-one is going to take the risk.
The thing is, EU buyers already buy gas (and oil) from the Arctic. A lot of it.
Most of the gas, some 12 million tonnes so far this year, comes from Russia’s Yamal LNG plant, which sits on the shore of the biggest estuary you have never heard of, the Gulf of Ob (Obskaya Guba in Russian).
But that will end 10 weeks from now, when the EU ban on Russian LNG kicks in.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership