Philippe Chalmin, professor of economic history at Paris-Dauphine University, specialist in raw materials and energy, said on Saturday September 3 on franceinfo that the shutdown “complete” of the Nord Stream gas pipeline by the Russian giant Gazprom due to oil leaks is “a way of putting pressure” on Europeans. For him, “It’s a leak of political oil”.
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franceinfo: Can oil leaks really justify the complete shutdown of the gas pipeline?
Philippe Chalmin: It’s a political oil leak, since Siemens, which manufactures the turbine in question, says that this type of event can happen and that there is no reason to stop the pipeline. It’s a way of exerting pressure, all the more so as we feel the tension rising in Europe because of the soaring gas prices, the soaring electricity prices. Doubts about the strategy adopted vis-à-vis Russia are growing a little bit and you have to realize that this concerns us less at the French level, but there are a certain number of countries to the east of the Europe which are beginning to be weak links, in particular Bulgaria. This is really not the time for Vladimir Putin to lower the pressure he is putting on Europe through natural gas.
The G7 decided to cap the price of Russian oil. The President of the European Commission believes that it is time to cap Russian gas prices. In doing so, aren’t Westerners acting like Russia?
I would say it’s easier on the Russian side to turn off the tap than on the Western side. I fear that the system imagined by the G7 is somewhat of a gas plant.
“It must be noted that for the moment Russian oil sales have been largely maintained, even beyond the estimates that we had been able to make. Admittedly, Russian oil is selling for a little less than a barrel of Brent , but, for now anyway, Russia is relatively unaffected.”
Philippe Chalmin, professor of economic historyat franceinfo
On gas, it’s all the same more complex because they are closing Nord Stream, which means that little by little they will no longer export gas to Europe, except that they don’t have so many other means of exporting gas. The pipes to China are saturated and exports of liquefied natural gas will be quite limited anyway.
Gazprom assures that it will deliver nearly 43 million cubic meters of gas to Europe via Ukraine this Saturday. Deliveries are therefore not cut off?
The Gazprom people, for now, are trying to respect the contracts as much as possible, so they are trying to find good reasons not to use Nord Stream. The paradox is that, in fact, the pipe that passes through Ukraine continues to deliver gas, in the same way that there are pipes that bring in, to Italy in particular, gas from the Caspian Sea. If the Russians wanted to block it, they would somehow succeed. So somewhere they maintain a certain fiction of a contract where they just have technical problems, as if they say “oh well there is a war? No, we are not concerned, we only have problems techniques”.