The seriousness of the situation is underlined by the fact that Russia maintained gas supplies to Europe even at the height of the Cold War. Instead, the pipeline has now been shut down twice since the Russian invasion of Ukraine: for 10 days in July in addition to the current indefinite shutdown. Gazprom said supplies would stop indefinitely after a leak was found in the pipeline and would not restart until repairs were completed. The move came hours after G7 nations agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil in order to stop funds for Vladimir Putin’s regime and its invasion of Ukraine. Flows through the pipeline – which runs from the Russian coast near St Petersburg to northeastern Germany and can carry up to 170 cubic meters of natural gas per day – were due to resume yesterday after a three-day outage. However, hours before the gas was pumped, Gazprom released a photo of what it said was an oil leak on a piece of Nord Stream 1 equipment. Siemens Energy, which supplies and maintains equipment at the Nord Stream 1 compressor station in Portovaya, said on Friday that the leak was not a technical reason to stop the gas flow, adding that it could be sealed on site and was “in the context routine maintenance work’. . This view was supported by the German Federal Network in its daily report on the natural gas situation. “The defects claimed by the Russian side are not a technical reason for the suspension of operations,” it said. The Kremlin has blamed Western sanctions for disrupting Nord Stream 1 and creating barriers to routine maintenance work, although officials in the West have rejected that claim. Asked about the disruption yesterday, Paolo Gentiloni, the European Union’s economic commissioner, said the EU expects Russia to respect the energy contracts it has agreed. However, he insisted the union was still well prepared in the event of a total disruption of Russian gas supplies thanks to gas storage capacity and energy-saving measures. “Gas storage is currently around 80%, thanks to the diversification of supplies,” even if the situation varies from country to country, Gentiloni added. “We are not afraid of Putin’s decisions. We ask the Russians to respect the contracts, but if they don’t, we are ready to react,” he told reporters. Analysts also pointed out that the Russian move to extend its pipeline shutdown came shortly after Germany – which is heavily dependent on Russian gas – revealed that its winter storage was expanding faster than expected, suggesting that the move was made as a last chance to strengthen the screw and cause maximum damage during the winter. Germany’s grid regulator said the country’s gas supply was currently guaranteed, but warned that the situation was tense and further deterioration could not be ruled out. Vladimir Putin’s tactics have left the UK and Europe in a panic, a former energy industry boss warned yesterday. Angela Knight, former chief executive of trade association Energy UK, said there was too much reliance in the UK and Europe on energy supplies from “not so friendly” countries. “We’ve had our energy policy wrong for a long, long time,” he told Times Radio yesterday. However, Knight insisted the UK could pull through this winter. “It’s going to be difficult, it’s going to be expensive and there’s going to have to be some help to different groups of people and some help to the industry,” he said, adding that there was “tremendous ability to reset a lot of our strategies and policies.”
