Will the most important pipeline for Russian gas supplies to Europe resume operations on Thursday? That’s not certain – certainly not the amount. Moscow left the buyers in the dark until the very end.
Day of truth in Lubmin in western Pomerania: is Russia actually allowing gas to arrive in significant quantities at the German landing station of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline – or is Moscow further exacerbating the energy crisis? According to preliminary figures from the operating company, gas deliveries via the Baltic Sea pipeline are about as large as before the maintenance was announced for Thursday – namely a little less than 30 million kilowatt hours per hour, i.e. around 700 gigawatt hours per day. This is based on preliminary information that was published on the Nord Stream AG website on Thursday night (as of 4:00 a.m.).
The announced quantity is roughly the same as before routine maintenance began, which was scheduled to end Thursday, when the pipeline was running at about 40 percent capacity. However, the information on this can still change.
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline – the main gas pipeline from Russia to Germany – was put into operation in 2011. Since June, however, Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom has cut gas supplies to Germany by more than half. This was justified with a missing turbine from Siemens Energy, which the federal government criticized as a pretense. Later, the more than 1,200-kilometer-long pipeline was also completely shut down for annual maintenance work – as planned until this Thursday. !function(){var t=window.addEventListener?”addEventListener”:”attachEvent”;(0,window[t])(“attachEvent”==t?”onmessage”:”message”,function(t){if (“string”==typeof t.data
Russian President Vladimir Putin had indicated deliveries after the end of the maintenance. The Russian agency Interfax recently quoted the head of the Kremlin as saying that the Russian state energy company Gazprom is fulfilling its obligations, has always fulfilled them and is willing to continue to fulfill all of its obligations. However, Russia has long had a reputation for using its energy supplies as a geopolitical means of exerting pressure – also and especially since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February.
Whether and how much gas will actually flow from Thursday remained unclear until recently. The data available in the morning were preliminary announcements, so-called nominations. Although these are important for network operators to ensure gas transport, they can still be changed, i.e. renominated, until shortly before the actual deliveries. According to the head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, this was already the case on Wednesday when other network operators had published figures.
Müller wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening that Gazprom had renominated and reduced the registered volume to 530 gigawatt hours on the first day, which corresponds to around 30 percent capacity utilization. According to him, 800 gigawatt hours had previously been promised.
The actual delivery volume will most likely have an impact on gas prices and thus also on the wallets of private customers. Further cutbacks or even a delivery stop would exacerbate the gas shortage, also with a view to the cold season, and make it more difficult to fill up the gas storage tanks. There were fears that Moscow could completely allow the gas tap even after the maintenance, thus further exacerbating the energy crisis. After the attack on Ukraine, the West imposed sanctions on Russia and supported the attacked neighboring country with arms deliveries. Russia, in turn, completely or partially shut off the gas supply to European countries.
According to a report presented by the Federal Ministry of Economics on Wednesday, the share of Russian gas deliveries, which used to average 55 percent, fell to 26 percent by the end of June 2022. This is due to the company Gazprom, which reduced gas flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 40 percent in June under the “pretext of technical issues”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had also criticized the technical reasons cited by Moscow as being pretentious.
Gazprom had significantly reduced deliveries via Nord Stream 1 and justified this with the lack of the turbine. This was sent to Canada for repair work and was held back for a long time due to sanctions. Ultimately, however, Canada decided at the request of Berlin to hand over the turbine to Germany. Referring to the fact that the turbine has still not been returned, Putin recently warned of further throttling at the end of July and a drastically reduced throughput capacity.