One of the best (or “worst,” depending on your penchant for journalistic veracity) stories about the six-year-old conflict in Syria is that it has almost nothing to do with the sectarian divide and everything to do with a proposed Qatari natural gas pipeline.

I’m not going to get into the details (you can find that conspiracy theory expounded elsewhere), but it amounts to this: what you think you see in Syria is another manifestation of Sunni/Shiite antagonism exacerbated by Washington’s never ending efforts to implement regime change in the Mideast, but what you’re actually seeing is a global conspiracy against Russia, whose energy interests in Europe would be undermined by a new pipeline that Bashar al-Assad didn’t support.

Make no mistake, there might be some kernels of truth in that story, but the idea that this is more “evil Western conspiracy against Kremlin energy interests” and less “Sunni/Shiite conflict” is silly in the extreme. It’s “big league” silly. Which is fine, because the people pushing that line are “big league” conspiracy theorists. So you know, if the shoe fits and all that.

Well in light of the above, I wanted to highlight a few excerpts out this morning from Goldman who reminds you that “Russia’s grip on the European gas market is facing its toughest test yet from the wave of LNG supply coming on line and heading for Europe,” and as it turns out, that thesis doesn’t rely entirely on a Doha-based conspiracy theory. Or at least not as that theory relies on a pipeline. In fact, the whole point is this:

Gas has been slow to emerge as a globally traded commodity Despite having a lower cost of production and larger reserves and lower ecological impact than other fossil fuels, for a long period the gas market did not expand to become a global commodity market. The key bottleneck was transportation: the only way to deliver gas to the consumer was to build a pipeline. While oil or coal could be loaded on ships and delivered to any destination, to deliver gas, producers needed a pipeline that would connect the field to the consumer. This required a large investment. As a result, and unlike oil and coal, natural gas was historically consumed in regions located close to production centres. This created separate regional markets (a European market, a US market, etc.) which had almost no connection with each other, resulting in regional imbalances.

LNG has enabled bottlenecks to be removed. However, with the emergence of LNG, transportation bottlenecks are no a longer barrier for gas. Gas can now be liquefied and, just like oil, loaded on ships and delivered to any destination. As a result, countries which have more gas than is needed for domestic consumption, such as the US and Australia, can now export their gas, monetizing their gas reserves. This would be impossible without LNG technology. Australia, for instance, would instead need to build pipelines under the ocean to deliver gas to China and other consuming nations.

Regasification capacity has doubled over ten years. Over the course of last 10 years, LNG infrastructure has developed substantially across the globe: Global regasification capacity (the facility which allows the conversion of LNG to natural gas) has doubled between 2005 and 2015, while the LNG fleet’s capacity has tripled over the same period. Following the development of LNG infrastructure, Asia emerged as the largest LNG consumer, reflecting an insufficient supply of pipeline gas volumes to meet its needs.