Russia has blocked the construction of a pipeline through Kazakhstan to China, with a capacity of 35 billion cubic meters of gas a year. At first glance, an ordinary energy move - but according to Russian energy expert Igor Alabuzhin, behind the decision lies a calculation that has nothing to do with the price of gas.

Alabuzhin argues the problem is who that gas would serve. In his view, energy along that route could power projects backed by American and Western capital - especially tungsten mines, a metal of strategic importance for the military industry. „Many have invested there," he says, adding that tungsten is used in munitions to make them more armor-piercing. Moscow, by this reading, sees the pipeline as a security risk, not a commercial deal.

It's worth being cautious - this is the view of one analyst, not confirmed state policy, and the claims about specific Western investors should be read as his thesis, not as fact. But even as a thesis, it illustrates the logic of the new energy geography well: the pipes no longer carry just gas, but geopolitics too. Who powers whom becomes more important than what a kilowatt costs.

For a region like ours, which has for decades depended on other people's pipes and other people's decisions, this is no abstract news. Every time the big players reroute energy flows for military or political calculations, the consequences eventually land on the bills of ordinary consumers in the Balkans. When Moscow, Beijing, and Washington haggle over metals and routes, the small markets usually pay the tax - without anyone asking them.