Europe discouraged by the shutdown of Russian gas supplies

In Europe, fears of an intensification of the energy crisis due to Russia cutting off gas supplies are growing in earnest. This came just hours after the G7 countries agreed to impose a price ceiling on Russian oil.

Fears that Europe could be engulfed in a winter energy crisis have reached new heights after Russian energy supplier Gazprom extended a gas ban on its key Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany.

According to The Guardian, the seriousness of the situation is emphasized by the fact that Russia ensured uninterrupted gas supplies to Europe even at the height of the Cold War between the USSR and the West. By contrast, the pipeline has been shut down twice since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine: for 10 days in July, in addition to the current indefinite closure.

Gazprom said deliveries would be halted indefinitely once a leak was found in the pipeline and would not resume until repairs were complete. This move, according to The Guardian, was taken a few hours after the G7 countries agreed to impose a ceiling on Russian oil prices.

Flows through the pipeline, which stretches from the Russian coast near St. Petersburg to northeast Germany and can transport up to 170 million cubic meters of gas per day, were supposed to resume after a three-day shutdown. But hours before the gas was due to be pumped in, Gazprom released a photograph of what is claimed to be an oil leak on a piece of Nord Stream 1 equipment.

For its part, Siemens Energy, which supplies and maintains Nord Stream 1’s Portovaya compressor station equipment, said on Friday that the leak was not a technical reason for shutting off gas flows, adding that it could be repaired on site and ” as part of routine maintenance work.

This view was echoed by the German Federal Network Agency in its daily report on the gas situation. “The defects claimed by the Russian side are not a technical reason for stopping operations,” the report says. Russia has blamed Western sanctions for disrupting Nord Stream 1 and creating barriers to scheduled maintenance work, though officials in the West have dismissed the claim.

Asked yesterday about the shutdown, Paolo Gentiloni, the European Union’s economic commissioner, said the EU expects Russia to honor the energy contracts it has negotiated. However, the European official insisted that the European Union was still well prepared in the event of a complete shutdown of Russian gas supplies due to gas storage capacity and energy conservation measures.

“Gas storage facilities are currently about 80% full thanks to supply diversification,” even if the situation varies from one country to another, Gentiloni added. “We are asking the Russians to comply with the contracts, but if they do not, we are ready to respond,” he told reporters.

Analysts also noted that Russia’s move to extend the pipeline shutdown came shortly after Germany, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, said its winter storage facilities were expanding faster than expected. The German grid regulator said the country’s gas supply was now secure, but warned that the situation was tense and further deterioration could not be ruled out.

The Kremlin’s tactics have caused panic in the UK and Europe, warns Angela Knight, former chief executive of trade association Energy UK. According to her, Britain and the European Union are too dependent on energy supplies from countries “not so friendly.”

“We’ve had the wrong energy policy for a very long time,” she told Times Radio.

However, Knight insists that Britain can survive this winter. “It’s going to be difficult, it’s going to be expensive, and it’s going to take some help from different groups of people and some help from the industry,” she said, adding that “there’s been a huge opportunity to reset a lot of our strategies and our policies.”