Status: 08/19/2022 7:46 p.m
The Russian state-owned company Gazprom has announced a three-day interruption in gas supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for the end of August. The reason is maintenance work. In response, gas prices skyrocketed.
The Russian state-owned company Gazprom has announced that it will interrupt gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline for three days at the end of August. Gazprom announced in the evening that no gas would flow to Germany from August 31 to September 2 due to maintenance work.
In the three days, the only functioning turbine at the Portovaya compressor station had to be checked and overhauled. This should be done in cooperation with specialists from Siemens Energy. When asked, Siemens Energy did not comment on Gazprom’s announcement.
Planned return to current delivery levels after maintenance
According to Gazprom, after the announced three-day maintenance work, 33 million cubic meters of natural gas are to be delivered daily through Nord Stream 1 – if there are no technical problems. This corresponds to 20 percent of the daily maximum output, to which Russia reduced the delivery a few weeks ago, citing necessary repairs. Western governments consider this justification to be false.
In order to retrieve a turbine repaired in Canada, Germany had asked the government in Ottawa for an exemption from sanctions against Moscow. But when the unit was back in Germany, Gazprom showed no rush to install it. Gazprom spoke of missing papers. The federal government therefore accused the government in Moscow of only pretending the technical problems.
Gas price is skyrocketing
The announcement of a further interruption of Russian gas supplies via Nord Stream 1 drove up the gas price: In response to the Gazprom announcement, the futures contract TTF, which is used as a reference, reached the price of 257.40 euros per megawatt hour on the energy exchange in the Netherlands in the evening – as much as never before at the close of trading.
The gas price had already risen during the course of the day. Analysts explained the price increase, among other things, with statements by network agency boss Klaus Müller. In an interview published on Thursday, he said that the targets set by the federal government for filling the gas storage facilities could hardly be achieved. It is planned that the reservoirs will be 85 percent full by October 1st and 95 percent by November 1st. Reaching the 85 percent target is “already very ambitious,” said Müller. The highest price was reached on March 7, shortly after the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. At that time, gas briefly cost 345 euros per megawatt hour in European trade.