(Berlin) Europe is anxiously waiting to see if Russian gas will start flowing again on Thursday in the Nord Stream gas pipeline, essential to avoid an energy crisis this winter.
Posted at 10:15 p.m.
After ten days of annual maintenance, deliveries are due to resume around 4 a.m. GMT in this pipeline which directly connects the Siberian gas fields to northern Germany, from where the gas is then exported to other European countries.
In the context of the war in Ukraine and the showdown between Moscow and the West over energy, no script has been written and Europe has prepared itself for the energy company Gazprom, owner of the gas pipeline, to cut the faucet for good or further reduce the flow.
“Russia is using gas as a weapon,” the President of the European Executive, Ursula von der Leyen, denounced again on Wednesday, presenting an emergency plan aimed at reducing European gas demand by 15%.
The countdown to the end of maintenance brought some positive signals on Wednesday, with the announcement of scheduled deliveries to the pipeline’s German endpoint in Lubmin.
“We assume that […] gas transport via Nord Stream will resume,” said the network operator in Germany, Gascade.
But we will have to wait for the gas to actually flow to check the level of volumes supplied by Gazprom.
Turbines “pretext”
The Russian giant has already drastically reduced its flows to Europe since mid-June and even a restart at 40% of capacity would be insufficient to guarantee the supply of individuals and businesses this winter.
In Germany, shortages could occur as early as February if the speed does not increase, according to assessments by the Federal Network Agency.
A halt in Russian gas supplies would reduce the value of German GDP by almost 5 percentage points between 2022 and 2024, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has calculated.
Nord Stream carries about a third of the 153 billion m3 of gas purchased annually by the EU.
However, Vladimir Putin suggested this week that the gas pipeline could operate at only 20% of its capacity as of next week.
The fault, according to the Russian president, to the turbines which equip the pipeline and which Russia has made a new instrument of pressure on the West.
A first of these turbines, which supply compressor stations, has just been repaired in Canada in the factories of the German group Siemens.
The component has left Canada to be sent back to Russia, but Gazprom says it has not yet received “the official documents” from Siemens that would allow it to be sent.
However, a second turbine must, according to Vladimir Putin, go into maintenance next week, likely to further halve deliveries.
Gazprom’s decisions on gas deliveries have from the start been deemed “political” by the German government, which has repeatedly accused Russia of citing turbine problems as a “pretext”.
Save Uniper
If gas shortages are feared this winter, the explosion in the cost of energy is already being felt, threatening recession for European economies which are barely recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Individuals “will be shocked when they receive a letter from their energy supplier” with a tripling or even quadrupling of the bill at stake, alerted Klaus Müller, president of the Federal Network Agency, to encourage the population to reduce its consumption.
The urgency is already there for the first gas storer in Germany, and as such the biggest customer of Gazprom: the energy group Uniper risks bankruptcy if it does not receive state aid in the very short term.
He must, for lack of Russian gas, do his shopping on the cash market where prices have exploded.
An entry of the State into the capital should be announced, Berlin fearing cascading effects comparable to a “Lehman Brothers” of energy in the event of the group’s bankruptcy.