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@ I ain't Spartacus: "To be fair to the EU - they have learned quite a big lesson about gas security. There's still a lot more LNG capacity to come on stream, and the US are also building export terminals. "

The problem is end to end capacity of LNG and vulnerability of those systems. There's only so many LNG carriers, the cargoes always follow the money (so may prefer a lower gas price to deliver gas from Qatar to India because the vessel can be carrying a new cargo more quickly), the liquefaction and gasification trains are energy intensive and of fixed capacity. We've already seen suspicious pipeline "accidents" that serve the Russian agenda, there's every reason to believe that a gas import or export terminal could be disabled if that fitted a Russian attempt to freeze Europe into submission. An unfortunate shipping accident on the approaches to Milford Haven would put the largest LNG terminal in Europe (South Hook) out of action for months and block the smaller Dragon LNG terminal, or the same tactic could obstruct the Isle of Grain LNG (noting the "availability to assist" of the SS Richard Montgomery). Or if a couple of LNG carrier had unfortunate accidents either minor or major, that'd put the crimpers on the transport. And so forth - lots of opportunities for Russian troublemaking even thousands of miles away from Europe, and all in ways they've already been seen to operate.

And that's before the necessity of contracting LNG and transport. If we start scrabbling around for LNG when it is obvious the Russians are about to stop supplies via Nordstream, that's far too late. What gas could be bought on the spot market would be astronomically expensive, and available in insufficient volumes - and then there's the need to hope that somebody was sitting around with a fully operational but uncontracted LNG tanker in winter - that's not going to happen.

"Plus there's been a lot of interconnector pipework going in, so that gas can be shipped from those countries with LNG capacity (or their own supplies) to those without. Thus cutting off the Ukrainian gas (which also cuts off most of Eastern Europe) now doesn't work as there's a much greater capacity to switch."

Yes, but the situation we're now in is that we're kicking off a dispute with Russia. Europe isn't self sufficient in gas, so moving it around Europe more freely doesn't help if there's not enough to go round.

Russia didn't care if Ukraine froze to death in the first place, now they won't mind freezing a load of Europeans. In a global gas market, even if the EU embargo Russian gas, the Ruskies will still be able to sell it elsewhere (sometimes to be rebadged and then sold back as non-embargo gas). Also, if there's a big freeze, and Russia starts turning the taps off, there's no way on Earth that Germany will export their gas reserves to other countries who haven't built suitable storage facilities (and why should they?).

The whole point of Southstream was that if it went ahead it would cement Russian control on the transport of central Asian gas to Europe. That it isn't going ahead doesn't matter because there's no high capacity alternative route, since the promotion of Southstream had already successfully stopped the Nabucco pipeline that could have given Europe access to Iranian and central Asian gas fields without Russian control.

You're right that the EU have learned much about security of gas supply, sadly that can be summarised as that they are totally and utterly screwed because they decided against all evidence of history and all common sense that Russia was a trustworthy energy supplier.