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Nord Stream 1 gas receiving station in Lubmin, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
The way is clear for the delivery of the Siemens turbine for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which will be serviced in Canada.
The government in Ottawa said on Saturday evening that they would make an exception to the Russia sanctions and send the turbine back to Germany.
Russia had justified a throttling of gas deliveries through the pipeline, among other things, with the missing turbine.
However, the federal government had emphasized that it considered this to be a pretense and saw that Russia was using gas supplies as a political weapon.
Russia, on the other hand, had said that gas supplies to Europe would be increased again when the turbine repaired in Canada was returned.
The Canadian government announced on Saturday that Siemens Canada would be granted a temporary and revocable permit to allow repaired Nord Stream 1 turbines to be returned to Germany.
Without the necessary supply of natural gas, the German economy would have major problems and there was a risk that Germans would no longer be able to heat their homes in winter, they said.
Violation of sanctions?
A spokesman for the federal government had recently spoken of "positive signals" from Canada for the return of the turbine.
The government has argued the turbine should be reinstated so that Russia can no longer invoke a technical problem.
Canada, in turn, did not like that because Ottawa feared violating Western Russia sanctions if the turbine was delivered to a compressor station in Russia.
A solution was therefore considered in which the turbine would first be delivered to Germany.
The cut in gas supplies from Nord Stream 1 has led to emergency measures by the federal government.
Among other things, she worries that the German gas storage facilities could not be sufficiently filled by autumn to also get companies that depend on gas for production to get through the winter well.
Maintenance work on the pipeline, which is expected to last ten days, will begin on Monday.
The fear was repeatedly expressed that Russia could then send even less gas through the pipeline or none at all.
mgo/Reuters