“The sanctions hurt a lot” to Russia which “needs income”, explained Thursday July 21 on franceinfo Christine Dugoin-Clément, researcher at the Think tank CAPE Europe. Gazprom has in recent weeks reduced its gas deliveries by 60% through the Nord Stream pipeline. The maintenance of a turbine in Canada was put forward by the Russian gas giant to justify this reduction.
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Vladimir Putin assured Wednesday at a summit in Iran that Gazprom will fulfill “fully“its obligations to its customers. Nord Stream restarted this Thursday morning. According to Christine Dugoin-Clément, a total shutdown of gas to Westerners is unlikely. “There would be major maintenance problems” and one “risk of corrosion” in the pipelines, explains the researcher.
franceinfo: Why is Vladimir Putin finally reopening the valves of his gas to Europe?
Christine Dugoin-Clement: At the beginning, there had been a use, which had been qualified as an alibi in particular by Germany, for the maintenance of turbines. There are five Siemens brand turbines working, each sending 30 million cubic meters of gas per day. There is one that ended up in maintenance in Canada and that Canada did not send back because of sanctions in Russia. And that allowed Gazprom to reduce exports by 40%. It was clearly taken as an alibi. Germany put pressure on Canada which finally returned the turbine after various negotiations and trying to say that finally the transport was not under sanctions.
Russia uses gas as a weapon?
Russia explains that Gazprom wants to maintain these contracts. It also needs other customers to remain a reliable supplier and, on the contrary, sends Westerners back to the sanctions they have taken. So, we are on a game, a little fool’s game. But we must not forget that Russia is a rentier economy and that the sanctions are hurting it very much and that it needs financial income. And then, if you ever cut off the gas completely, there would probably be major maintenance problems, especially with condensation problems that would occur and therefore an increased risk of corrosion in these pipelines, so a 0% cut would appear relatively complicated to set up.
How powerful is the gas tap?
It probably won’t be at full power. There are already noises, then statements that other turbines should be put into maintenance, which would further restrict gas production. In this kind of declaratory game between them, “it’s a weapon, not at all”, there could have been a compensation somewhere. We are talking about the Nord Stream pipeline, but there are other pipelines whose production could have been increased somewhere to compensate, notably Brotherhood, for example, which passes through Ukraine.
How do you see the sanctions against Russia bearing fruit?
You also recently had an additional wave of sanctions which then affected the purchase of gold. You need gold in particular to try to continue to maintain rates, including the rate of the ruble. There were statements in the summit that just took place in Iran from Vladimir Putin himself, explaining that the sanctions were starting to have a strong impact on the Russian economy. It is obvious that economic sanctions have a long-term effect. This was what had been put forward from the first days of the conflict when sanctions had been taken. There is a lag time before there is a visible effect.
“Sanctions alone in the history of international relations have rarely been enough in themselves to end a conflict.”
Christine Dugoin-Clementat franceinfo
Conflict starts and conflict ends are usually multivector. Nevertheless, the goal was to prevent Russia from being able to continue to finance its war effort or at least to complicate its task. This is what we are beginning to see, even if it would be illusory to believe that Russia is totally isolated at the international level. Westerners are not the whole world and Russia is not as isolated as one might wish.