(Updated with details, comments, Siemens Energy statements, background)
by Christoph Steitz and Nina Chestney
FRANKFURT/LONDON, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Russia on Wednesday halted the supply of natural gas to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, a further escalation in the economic tussle between Moscow and Brussels and stoking fears of energy rationing and recession in several EU countries.
The gas pipeline is officially stopped for three days, until Saturday 01:00 GMT, to allow maintenance work but EU countries fear that Moscow will seize the opportunity to extend the stoppage of gas deliveries, in retaliation against Western sanctions linked to the invasion of Ukraine.
Several capitals, including Paris, accuse Vladimir Putin’s regime of using gas as a “weapon of war”, which Russia refutes, citing purely technical reasons.
According to data published on the site of the operator of the gas pipeline, which supplies Europe with Russian natural gas passing under the Baltic Sea, the flows at the level of Nord Stream 1 have been zero since 01:00 GMT.
In Germany, one of the countries most dependent on Russian gas, the president of the national gas network regulatory authority assured that the country was better prepared for this type of cuts because its storage capacities are filled to almost 85% and that it has other sources of supply, liquefied natural gas (LNG) among others.
“We can use the gas from the storages during the winter, we save gas (and we have to continue!), the LNG terminals are coming and thanks to Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway (and soon France ), gas is flowing in,” Klaus Müller wrote on Twitter.
However, new restrictions on gas supplies to Europe risk increasing tensions on the energy market, which have already resulted in a 400% surge in one year of wholesale futures prices for natural gas. A situation that fuels inflationary tensions and forces governments to multiply measures to support purchasing power and calls for sobriety.
Unlike the maintenance operations last month, those started on Wednesday on Nord Stream 1 were announced less than two weeks ago and are carried out by Gazprom, the Russian public natural gas giant, and not by the operator of the gas pipeline.
PARIS CRITICIZES THE ANNOUNCED STOP OF DELIVERIES TO ENGIE
The Russian authorities, who had already reduced deliveries via Nord Stream 1 to 40% of its capacity in June and 20% in July, question the Western sanctions, which according to them prevent the delivery and installation of the necessary equipment on the ‘work.
According to Gazprom, the new shutdown for maintenance should make it possible to replace the last compressor in service at the Portovaya station in Russia, an operation which requires the intervention of specialists from the German industrial group Siemens.
Siemens Energy, a subsidiary of the latter which has carried out maintenance work on Nord Stream compressors and turbines in the past, said on Wednesday that it was not concerned by the work announced for this week but assured that it was ready to assist Gazprom.
Russia has also stopped all gas deliveries to Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland and has reduced the flow of other gas pipelines since the launch at the end of February of what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
She announced on Tuesday the total cessation of deliveries to the French Engie from Thursday, citing a disagreement on the application of the contracts, a “pretext” according to the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, for whom ” Russia uses gas as a weapon of war”.
“France has been preparing for this scenario since the spring: the filling of gas stocks will reach its maximum in about two weeks,” she said, adding that Russian gas only represented 9% of French supplies. , compared to 17% before the war.
On the German side, gas stocks are 83.65% full, a figure close to the 85% target set by Berlin for October 1, but the government has already warned that it would be difficult to reach the threshold of 95% targeted for November.
Across the European Union, storage capacities are 80.17% full, according to the count from Brussels.
(Report Nina Chestney and Christoph Steitz, with Matthias Inverardi, Bharat Govind Gautam and Eileen Soreng; French version Jean Terzian and Marc Angrand)