Europe’s Gas-Crunch Anxiety

Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union.

Russia is showing no signs of increasing gas flows to Europe as tensions with the West over Ukraine enter a critical period. Supplier Gazprom again opted not to book any pipeline space for March to send gas to Germany via the key Yamal-Europe link, auction results showed. Though the company can still use daily bookings, which it has done in the past, European natural gas and electricity prices jumped more than 10%. The U.S. has warned that Russia could attack its neighbor as early as this week, even though Moscow has repeatedly denied it plans to invade Ukraine. An escalation risks worsening Europe’s energy crunch, raising the specter of blackouts. Russia is Europe’s top source of natural gas, with about a third of its exports flowing through Ukrainian pipelines. And Europe’s storage facilities are already running low, with prices five times higher than normal for this time of year.