The volume of natural gas flowing from Russia to Europe has continued to plummet, with buyers in Italy, Germany, Austria and Slovakia receiving much lower volumes than usual.
Russia says the drop is because Siemens Energy was delaying the return of a repaired gas turbine from Canada. The delay in return of the turbine is said to be because of the sanctions on Russia. European leaders.
European customers who are being affected by the cuts, despite having agreed to to the ruble-to-gas scheme Putin has demanded, say that Russia’s official explanation is a lie and the lower deliveries were a political move from the Kremlin.
This week, Russia reduced supply to its biggest customers in Europe, Germany and Italy, each of which were sourcing around 40 percent of their gas from Russia before the invasion of Ukraine.
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On Tuesday, Russia’s Gazprom said it would limit gas supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany by 40 percent compared to planned flows because of a delay in equipment repairs. On Wednesday, Gazprom said the cuts would deepen to 60% of the daily throughput.
On Friday, Italy flagged additional cuts to deliveries, with Eni saying it would receive just half of the volumes requested for the day. Earlier this week, Russian supply to Italy was cut by 15%.
Slovakia also said it was getting less than half of the typical Russian gas volumes via Nord Stream on Friday. France, for its part, said it hadn’t received gas from Germany since Wednesday.
The Russian cuts in supply come as Europe is looking to refill its gas storage and avoid a winter of rationing for industries. Europe’s gas prices have jumped by over 50% in one week following the outage of the Freeport LNG export terminal in the U.S. and the significantly reduced Russian gas supply to major consumers in Europe.
This article was extracted from oilprice.com
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
