DContrary to what has been announced, no gas will continue to flow through the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 1 from this Saturday. The state-owned company Gazprom announced this on Telegram on Friday evening. The reason is an oil leak in the Portovaya compressor station. The gas flow remains stopped until it is eliminated. It had been expected that gas would flow through the line again from Saturday morning after the announced three-day maintenance work had been completed.
According to Gazprom, the leak was discovered during maintenance work on the station, which was carried out jointly with experts from Siemens Energy. The leaked oil was found in several places. It is not possible to guarantee the safe operation of the last remaining gas turbine there. It was said that such oil spills had happened in the past.
Last 20 percent of the maximum amount
A letter about the complaints about the Trent 60 unit with the number 24 and about the necessary repairs went to the head of Siemens Energy, Christian Bruch, Gazprom said. The first gas deliveries had previously been announced for Saturday morning. This emerged from preliminary data on the Nord Stream AG website. According to this, gas deliveries were scheduled again from 2 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The volume of the announced deliveries initially corresponded to the level before the interruption, i.e. around 20 percent of the maximum possible volume and thus 33 million cubic meters of natural gas daily. In the late Friday afternoon, the preliminary data then showed only a hardly significant amount.
Since Wednesday morning, no gas has flowed through the last most important pipeline for Russian gas to Germany. According to the Russian energy company Gazprom, the reason is maintenance work on a compressor station. The company had announced that the delivery stop would last until September 2nd.
The Russian energy giant Gazprom is not to blame for the fact that the reliability of the line through the Baltic Sea is at risk, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax agency at noon. There are no technical reserves. “Only one turbine is running,” he said when asked by a journalist about possible further interruptions.
According to the head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, the LNG terminals, the relevant storage levels and significant savings needs will gain in importance after Gazprom’s decision. It is good that Germany is now better prepared, but now it depends on everyone, writes Müller in a tweet.
Germany now receives by far the most natural gas from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. According to the Federal Network Agency, around 2,900 gigawatt hours of natural gas flowed from these countries to Germany on Thursday. For comparison: On Monday, the last day before the announced supply reduction, Nord Stream 1 transported around 348 gigawatt hours of Russian natural gas. The amount stored was always a multiple of this delivery amount from Russia. For example, 965 gigawatt hours of natural gas were stored in Germany on Tuesday.
The European Commission accused Gazprom of stopping the gas flow on false pretenses. “Gazprom’s announcement this afternoon that it will shut down Nord Stream 1 again under false pretenses is further evidence of its unreliability as a supplier,” a spokesman for the European Commission wrote on Twitter. It is also a testament to Russia’s cynicism, preferring to burn gas rather than fulfill contracts.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Economics declined to comment on the suspension of gas supplies. “We have already seen Russia’s unreliability in the past few weeks and accordingly we have continued our measures to strengthen independence from Russian energy imports undeterred and consistently,” she explains. The gas storage is 84.3 percent full. The October storage target of 85 percent should therefore already be reached in the first days of September.