Tap cut in Poland, Bulgaria and Finland, greatly reduced flow to Germany, Austria and Italy, and no more cubic meters to France: Europeans denounce Vladimir Putin’s gas blackmail, while the continent wants take advantage of the summer to stock up.
In the fourth month of the war in Ukraine, Moscow is pressing where it hurts and playing on the energy vulnerability of Europeans, 40% of the gas they burn usually comes from Russia. These proportions were even higher in the East: 55% for Germany, or 85% in Bulgaria.
Gas is not lacking for the moment for most Europeans, in summer, because there is no need to heat the buildings. But the cuts come as countries must take advantage of the summer to fill their reserves, with a target of at least 80% by November in the European Union.
France and Germany want to avoid panic and reassure their citizens: the stocks of the two countries are constantly increasing, and are already at 56%.
But the drop in deliveries is driving up prices, which will be expensive for manufacturers, especially in Germany, whose factories are often directly connected to gas pipelines. The benchmark price for natural gas in Europe, the Dutch TTF, jumped to around 130 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) on Friday, against around 100 euros on Wednesday, while it was selling around 30 euros a year ago.
“The Russians have been using gas as a weapon for a long time,” Thierry Bros, professor at Sciences Po Paris, told AFP. “The Kremlin uses the principle of uncertainty, one day something and the next day something else, to look at our unity and to strain the commodity market and drive up prices.”
On Friday, the manager of the French transmission network, GRTgaz, announced that it had no longer received any Russian gas by pipeline since June 15. This gas passed through a single interconnection point with Germany.
France relied on Russia for around 17% of its gas, which can arrive by pipeline (the vast majority) or in liquid form by LNG carriers.
The flows through this gas pipeline had already been considerably reduced but have now fallen to zero.
The French Ministry for Energy Transition told AFP that the supply was now made “by very large quantities of gas from Norway, Spain and through its LNG terminals”.
He explains the reduction to zero of physical flows by balancing gas distribution contracts between France and Germany, in both directions: the operator therefore “no longer needs to circulate physical gas in the ‘infrastructure’.
But the interruption comes as Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, cut gas deliveries to Germany by 60% this week via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Purchase of LNG
“We should have no illusions, we are in a showdown with Putin,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s Minister of Economy and Climate, on Thursday. “That’s how dictators and despots act. »
The consequences are more serious for the neighbors of France, and not only Germany: Italy depends 40% on Russia and it will receive Friday only 50% of the Russian gas requested by its national company Eni.
The head of the Italian government, who was in kyiv on Thursday, denounced a “political use of gas”.
Officially, Gazprom claimed technical reasons for Nord Stream 1 equipment, but European leaders do not believe it. Europe is therefore looking all over the place for non-Russian gas sources, by gas pipeline but above all in liquid form, with liquefied natural gas (LNG).
France has four terminals which are used to receive LNG arriving by LNG carriers and plans to install others.
It has already greatly increased its LNG purchases since the start of the war and its terminals are close to their technical maximum, according to GRTgaz. To the point that France has become the biggest buyer of Russian LNG in the world, according to the Center for research on energy and clean air.