Only about 0.5% of Ireland’s exports go to Russia. There are few imports not even of gas, which is sourced directly by pipeline from the UK, most with an ultimate origin in Norway.

A shutdown of Ireland’s merchandise trade with Russia will barely register, but a pan-European withdrawal from reliance on Russian energy is a different matter.

The knock-on effects will be serious, already visible in the oil and gas markets, where volatile pricing is inevitable while the conflict lasts.

The US, which has very little exposure to energy imports from Russia, has already commenced discussions with Europe about a complete cessation and the strategy appears to be the gradual strangulation of Russia’s hard currency earnings.

These come mainly from fossil fuels, with some metals, weapons and agricultural commodities, but not much in services or manufacturing.

After over 30 years post-communist era, Russia has not equipped itself with anything resembling a modern economy, a sharp contrast with China, with which it likes to compare itself.

A bucketful of liquefied natural gas (LNG) equates to about 600 buckets in gaseous form, and the traditional mode of transportation was through pipelines at high pressure

The oil market is truly global. It is relatively inexpensive to ship oil over long distances and prices of crude and refined product in the wholesale market tend to be similar around the world – any price gaps get arbitraged away quickly.

This is not as simple for gas, which has a far lower energy density unless converted to liquid form.

A bucketful of liquefied natural gas (LNG) equates to about 600 buckets in gaseous form, and the traditional mode of transportation was through pipelines at high pressure. But very long pipelines are not economic and there are no trans-oceanic examples.

Shipping gas through pipelines over long distances has high capital costs and uses up lots of gas to power compression stations along the way.

Until fairly recently, the technology of rendering the gas liquid, and thus economic for ocean transport, had not been widely deployed. This has changed and there are now around 700 LNG tankers in operation worldwide.

Countries that never exported LNG, notably the US, have been building liquefaction plants in recent years

According to the consultants Wood Mackenzie, just 29 new carriers were delivered last year, but there has been a revival in light of the Ukraine crisis and 15 were ordered in January alone. The shipyards that build them have filled their order books and delivery slots as far out as 2026 are getting scarce.

Countries that never exported LNG, notably the US, have been building liquefaction plants in recent years and importing countries are scrambling to construct terminals, including storage facilities.

The absence of trans-oceanic pipelines and the shortage of importation terminals in Europe has meant that prices in the US, where the shale revolution has made natural gas plentiful, are way below the European or Asian level. This is not physically possible, for now, and is costlier than with crude anyway.

Europe is heavily reliant on Russian gas and a reduction in supplies is already under way without formal sanctions or an agreed EU policy.

The Government has three options in the medium-term

Uncertainty about getting paid is an issue that has spilled over from the banking isolation of Russia and there have even been reports of dockworkers declining to service Russian vessels at European ports.

The result is much higher gas prices across the market, including Ireland, even though Ireland is not a direct importer of Russian gas.

The Government has three options in the medium-term.

The first is to permit the construction of an LNG terminal somewhere on the island, with a ready-to-go project available in north Kerry. The second is to encourage exploration adjacent to the existing Corrib infrastructure off the Mayo coast.

The third is to discourage low-priority uses of gas – 70% is imported, only about 30% comes from Corrib and it will not last forever. Relying on a single pipeline from Scotland always looked risky and the Shannon LNG project should have been given official support a long time ago.

Finally, there are low-priority uses of gas which it is official policy to discourage, notably for space heating in buildings

If there are prospects worth exploring close to the Corrib infrastructure, it seems foolhardy not to let the people with the licences fire ahead. The marginal costs would be low and per-unit carbon emissions from Corrib gas are apparently lower than with the imported alternative.

Finally, there are low-priority uses of gas which it is official policy to discourage, notably for space heating in buildings.

Another is the Aughinish Alumina plant in west Limerick, owned by a company with Russian oligarch connections. Aughinish is a big consumer of both gas and electricity, also likely to be in tight supply in the years ahead, since the plan is to electrify the car fleet and more of the space heating load.

Of course, there are several hundred jobs at Aughinish, but the ESB has plans for developing the wind industry in the Shannon estuary and the LNG terminal could be hiring people too.