The future is soon to come in which Russia will not give anything to Europe, experts say.
The European Union has reached its goal of filling gas storage facilities two months ahead of schedule, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. This statement caused a drop in gas prices, which had been rising rapidly due to the Kremlin’s gas blackmail. Obviously, Russia did not like the situation and it once again stopped transporting gas through the Nord Stream and prices returned to growth. The Kremlin launched a gas war against the EU more than a year ago. After the massive invasion of Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin tightened the gas valve to blackmail Europe, but they decided to find a substitute for Russian gas. Correspondent.net telling the details.
“Putin’s Blackmail Failed”
Gas supplies to Europe through the Russian Nord Stream 1 pipeline have been completely stopped, Gazprom announced the state’s gas concern. On August 31, “scheduled work on the gas compressor unit began,” the Russian company said in a statement.
According to Russian newspaper Kommersant, citing data from gas pipeline operator Nord Stream AG, the amount of gas pumped through Nord Stream fell to zero early on August 31.
Last night, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that the EU member states fulfilled the plan ahead of schedule to fill gas storage facilities to the level of 80 percent. He announced this at the Baltic Sea Energy Security Summit in Copenhagen.
EU countries have met their goal of filling gas storage facilities two months ahead of schedule amid cuts in Russian gas supplies to the EU.
“So far, we in the European Union have reached an average filling level of gas storage facilities of 80 percent. So we have reached the volume we agreed for the current year,” said von der Leyen .
The North Sea summit has been a success.
Today the Baltic Sea Summit shows once again that the winds of change are blowing in Europe.
Wind power helps us break free from Russian fossil fuels and become climate neutral.
https://t.co/5MrLnoVAyy— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 30, 2022
The target has been reached in nine of the 19 EU countries with gas storage facilities. In Germany, underground storage facilities are 81.07 percent full, in Italy – 80.11 percent, in France – 90.06 percent, in Poland and Portugal – almost 100 percent. The Netherlands (73.34 percent) and Austria (60.58 percent), which are also among the top five countries with the largest gas reserves, lag behind.
In addition, seven Baltic Sea states – Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Denmark – on Tuesday announced a commitment to increase wind power generation sevenfold to 20 gigawatts by 2030 so that Northern Europe get rid of natural Russian hope. gas..
It has been reported that 20 gigawatts is enough to power 20 million homes. “This is more than the wind energy capacity in the entire EU today,” said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Von der Leyen added that “Putin’s attempt to blackmail [ЕС] “We are accelerating the transition to green energy, eliminating dependence on Russian fossil fuels, increasing the production of renewable, cleaner, cheaper, European energy,” said the President of the European Commission at the meeting.
Photo session with turbine SP. Scholz exposed Putin’s bluff
It is also necessary to strengthen energy ties within Europe, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The German chancellor said he strongly supports the idea of building a gas pipeline connecting the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe as Berlin tries to reduce its dependence on Russia.
Remember that Brussels offers EU countries to voluntarily reduce their consumption by 15 percent and aims to get the right to introduce mandatory reductions if there is a severe shortage of gas. Some countries are already working on an “energy moderation” plan.
How Russia is losing the European market: soon it will not sell anything
The Kremlin has once again shown Europe that at any moment and under any reason it can stop the flow of gas, thus proving that the Europeans have started on the right path of completely abandoning Russian fuel.
Before the war, Russian imports covered almost 40 percent of European gas consumption. Now this share has decreased to 25 percent, because the current supplies do not exceed a third of the usual volumes in the last five years.
“The future will soon come when Russia will not give anything to Europe. Small volumes will remain – 10-15 billion annually – in Southern Europe through the Turkish Stream. But in general, Europe will live without Russian gas, and Russia, Gazprom, respectively, – without export income from deliveries,” predicted Marcel Salikhov, president of the Russian Institute of Energy and Finance.
“By all appearances, in two or three years at the most, Russia will completely lose its ability to supply gas to Europe,” said Mikhail Krutikhin, a Russian oil and gas market analyst.
However, denying Russian energy carriers would be very expensive for Europe. According to Bloomberg analysts, the authorities of European countries are preparing to allocate approximately 280 billion euros in compensation to the population and businesses to support them during the unprecedented energy crisis that has occurred on the continent after anti-water quarantines and against the backdrop. of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Experts explain that European countries can replace Russian gas through the supply of liquefied gas, particularly from the United States. The EU has another possible major gas supplier in reserve – Qatar. There is one problem – Qatar, whose gas reserves are almost inexhaustible, wants a long-term contract, which is contrary to the European policy of competitive supplies.
As for Russia, the main alternative for this is China. However, experts doubt that he will be able to compensate for falling supplies from EU countries.
“China doesn’t need a lot of gas [сколько Европе]. All Chinese policy documents do not provide for an increase in supplies from Russia, in addition to the Power of Siberia,” said Krutikhin.
At the same time, Beijing will be able to dictate its terms and not offer the most favorable price for Russia.
Turkey remains another important market for Russia. The infrastructure that Russia currently has does not allow the redirection of gas supplies to other countries, and it is very difficult to build a new infrastructure under sanctions.
Until China and Turkey start buying more Russian gas, Gazprom is forced to burn $10 million worth of it every day, according to independent Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy, because it can’t be sold.
Earlier, Athletistic wrote that Russia had to mothball the wells due to a decrease in gas exports, and the Russians did not have the technologies for re-mothballing, as well as for drilling new wells. More on this in the Gas war material.
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Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.