Natural gas flow to Europe reduced as Gazprom cuts Nord Stream 1 capacity again | Business news

Gazprom plans to reduce natural gas supplies to Europe by reducing the capacity of Nord Stream 1 to only 20% from Wednesday.

Russia’s state-owned energy company said “daily throughput” would be reduced from 4 a.m. due to equipment repairs needed.

Russia in June reduced the capacity of Nord Stream 1 to 40%. and took it offline for a 10-day maintenance break in July, blaming a delay in the return of a Siemens turbine that had been serviced in Canada.

But Germany said the turbine was not due to be used until September and that it saw no technical reason to cut supplies further this month.

Gazprom said it had received documents from Siemens and Canada about the turbine, but they “do not remove previously identified risks and raise additional questions.”

“In addition, Gazprom’s questions regarding EU and UK sanctions remain open, the resolution of which is important for the delivery of the engine to Russia and the urgent overhaul of other gas turbine engines for the Portavaya compressor station.”

Siemens Energy said the missing turbine was ready for delivery, but the customs documents needed to import it to Russia were missing.

It stated that Gazprom, as a customer, is obliged to provide them.

Dependence on Russian gas

Parts of Europe depend on oil and gas from Russia, and Nord Stream 1 is Russia’s largest gas connection to the continent.

It runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to Germany, Europe’s largest economy, which is particularly dependent on it.

But Europe claims that Russia is taking advantage of this dependence, using its energy supplies as a tool of blackmail against countries that have imposed sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.

There is fears that Russia may cut off gas supplies this wintersending Germany into recession and pushing prices sky high for consumers.

Massive increase in energy prices

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Western sanctions could lead to a massive increase in energy prices for consumers around the world.

But the Kremlin has also said that it is not interested in a complete shutdown of gas supplies to Europe.

This would cause great pain to some European countries, but it would also mean a loss of revenue for Russia.

Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia.

Europe receives about 40% of its gas and 30% of its oil from Russia.