The Russian giant Gazprom announced on Tuesday that it was cutting its daily gas delivery capacity to Germany by more than 40% via the Nord Stream gas pipeline, the necessary equipment not having been delivered by the German group Siemens.
“Gas deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline can only be guaranteed up to a volume of 100 million m3 of gas per day instead of 167 million m3 per planned day,” the group said in a statement posted on Telegram messaging.
Due, among other things, to the lack of Siemens compressors, “only three gas compression units can currently be used” at the Portovaya compressor station, near the town of Vyborg in the Leningrad region (northwest of Russia), where Nord Stream is filled.
Contacted by AFP, Siemens did not want to “comment for the moment” on this question, specifying however that it was “in the process of clarifying the situation, if and how it concerns [notre] company “.
The German government has announced that it will release aid of 12 to 13 billion Canadian dollars to save the former German subsidiary of Gazprom, threatened with bankruptcy, and which Berlin took control in early April to ensure its gas supply, sources said. governments on Tuesday.
“The government will prevent the bankruptcy of Gazprom Germania […] thanks to a loan,” the chancellery said in a statement. A government source told AFP that the amount of this loan, granted by the German public bank KfW, could reach between 12 and 13 billion Canadian dollars.
Despite the military intervention in Ukraine, the country continues to import almost 35% of its gas from Russia, even though this proportion was 55% before February.
Pay in rubles
Russian gas exports to Europe have been steadily declining since the start of sanctions against Russia.
Gazprom has interrupted its gas deliveries to several European customers who refused to pay in rubles.
In response to sanctions imposed by the European Union following the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin demanded that buyers of Russian gas from “unfriendly” countries pay in rubles from accounts in Russia or risk being deprived supply, despite contracts providing for payments in euros or dollars.
However, a number of European customers have refused.
The Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline delivers Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, over two sections of 1,224 kilometers each.
It was commissioned in 2012, after costing nearly 9.95 billion Canadian dollars in investment.
The former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had been one of the main architects of this project, the only pipeline directly linking Germany and Russia, without passing through a transit country.
According to data from the pipeline company, 59.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas were exported from Russia to Europe by Nord Stream in 2021.
The second gas pipeline in this system, Nord Stream 2, is stillborn. Very controversial in Europe, it had been completed but was awaiting the green light from the German regulator to be put into service, before the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine signed its death warrant.