The Russian group Gazprom announced on Monday that it will drastically reduce, as of Wednesday, the supply of Russian gas to Europe through the Nord Stream gas pipeline, justifying the reduction with the maintenance of a turbine.
The production capacity of the Portovaïa compressor station will amount to 33 million m3 per day on July 27 at 07:00 (05:00 Lisbon time), Gazprom said, that is, around 20% of the capacity of the gas pipeline compared to the current 40. %
The decision was announced on Gazprom’s Telegram account.
Russia already had doubled down the volume of its deliveries in June, claiming that the pipeline cannot function normally without a turbine that is under repair in Canada and was not delivered to Russia due to Western sanctions on Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Germany and Canada have since agreed to take back the equipment for Russia, but the turbine has yet to be delivered.
For Berlin, this is a decision. “politics” it’s a “pretext” to put pressure on Western countries in the context of the conflict in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had already warned that if Russia did not receive the missing turbine, the pipeline would run at 20% capacity starting this week due to upcoming maintenance on a second turbine.
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The Nord Stream gas pipeline connects Russia with Germany through the Baltic Sea and, according to Gazprom, has a capacity of 167 million m3 per day. Several countries are heavily dependent on Russian energy resources..
Western countries accuse Moscow of using it in retaliation for sanctions adopted after Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.
For its part, the Kremlin says that the sanctions are at the root of the technical problems in the gas infrastructure and that the Europe hit by the measures it imposed on Russia.
In a previous statement released on Monday, Gazprom had already indicated that the delivery of the first turbine was blocked, pointing to “problems” due to the “sanctions of the European Union and the United Kingdom.”
Source: Observadora
