Russia halts Nord Stream gas supply to Germany for 3 days
Moscow, Aug 31 (EFE).- Russian state energy giant Gazprom on Wednesday suspended gas supply to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for compressor unit maintenance until Sep. 3.
The supply was halted at 4 am Moscow time (01:00 GMT), according to the real flow data on the website of Nord Stream AG, the company that operates the gas pipeline running under the Baltic Sea.
“This set of scheduled operations under the current service maintenance contract will be performed jointly with Siemens,” Gazprom said in a statement on Twitter on Wednesday.
“According to the technical specifications provided by Siemens, the unit must undergo technical maintenance every 1,000 hours, namely, the casing must be inspected for cracks, dents, deformations and burn-throughs, and cleaned,” it added.
Once the maintenance work is completed, the pumping will be restored to 33 million cubic meters per day, the level prior to the cessation of operations.
Russia has been gradually reducing the volume of gas supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, claiming technical problems and the need to repair the Siemens Energy turbines.
On July 27, Gazprom announced that it was cutting gas pumping to a fifth of the pipeline’s capacity, a decision that Berlin described as a Russian “war strategy.”
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “apart from technological problems caused by sanctions (on Russia), nothing hampers supplies.”
He stressed that the sanctions adopted by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and European countries against Russia “do not allow normal service and repair work, and gives no room for the legal registration of the return of necessary units and assemblies to their places of operation.”
“This concerns those irrational actions of Europeans, which are very difficult to understand and, probably, impossible to explain, but for which ordinary citizens have to pay a lot,” he added.
Moscow has repeatedly suggested that the situation could be resolved by putting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline into operation.
This pipeline was never put into operation because Germany froze its certification on Feb. 22, the day after Russia recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, and two days before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. EFE
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