“We need the gas”: is Putin turning off the tap in Germany too?
Created: 04/29/2022, 05:11
By: Klaus Rimpel, Wolfgang Hauskrecht
Gazprom has confirmed that Russian gas is no longer flowing to Poland and Bulgaria.
Would a gas delivery stop also be conceivable for Germany and what would the consequences be?
Munich – After stopping Russian gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria, the federal government does not initially see the supply of German customers in danger.
Energy experts do not believe that Russia will soon turn off the gas supply to Germany.
"We shouldn't panic now that Russia will do the same to us.
Russia needs the revenue," Tobias Federico, head of the energy consulting firm Energy Brainpool, told
Münchner Merkur
.
“The income from Germany is significant.
We consume most of the natural gas from Russia.” Putin wants to show power and spread fear.
However, Federico qualifies that with Putin you never know exactly what will happen next.
The Russian state-owned company Gazprom has stopped supplying Poland and Bulgaria, allegedly in a dispute over payment modalities.
The EU Commission criticized this as an attempt at blackmail, which a Kremlin spokesman rejected.
With the lack of deliveries, the economic conflict between Europe and Russia is also escalating.
After Russian delivery stop: Gazprom warns Poland and Bulgaria
"The tap was turned off," said Poland's climate minister Anna Moskwa.
Russian gas no longer flows through the Yamal pipeline.
Gazprom confirmed the stoppage of deliveries, the companies PGNiG and Bulgargaz did not pay in rubles on time.
Sofia and Warsaw stressed that they had fulfilled their contractual obligations.
Gazprom warned both countries against tapping Russian gas that is supplied to other states through their territory.
Gas normally flows via the Yamal pipeline from Russia via Belarus to Poland and to Mallnow in Brandenburg, where the gas is taken over and forwarded to Western Europe.
However, the importance of the connection has decreased.
According to figures from the Federal Network Agency, little or no gas flowed to Germany through Yamal.
The most important connection between Russia and Germany is the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline, which bypasses Poland and Belarus.
Putin is concerned: Germany wants to become less dependent on Russian energy imports
Germany met 55 percent of its gas needs in Russia last year and is working in a hurry to reduce dependency.
The share is now 35 percent, said Economics Minister Robert Habeck.
The reservoirs were also slowly filling up.
One works with high pressure on LNG terminals, said Habeck.
By the summer of 2024, the share of Russian gas is expected to drop to ten percent.
According to Habeck, oil and coal are progressing even faster.
The Polish government considers the impact on its own country to be minor.
Bulgaria also declared that it was working on an alternative gas supply.
For the time being, there is no need to limit consumption.
The poorest EU country has been a member since 2007, but is almost completely dependent on gas from Russia.
A connection to the network of neighboring Greece should be ready in June.
According to Brussels, Poland and Bulgaria should get gas from their EU neighbors.
The federal government wants to continue to hold on to gas from Russia in order to avoid negative consequences for the economy.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made it clear several times that if deliveries are stopped, entire branches of industry in Germany are threatened and a recession is imminent.
Russian energy supplies: Bavaria's economy fears delivery stops
Bertram Brossardt, Managing Director of the Bavarian Business Association, also warns: "A stop in the supply of Russian natural gas would hit the Bavarian economy hardest." 22 percent of the companies in Bavaria would expect an immediate production stop, said Brossardt on request.
Companies that are directly dependent on natural gas fear a drop in sales of 40 percent.
220,000 employees in Bavaria would be directly affected by the consequences.
"Indirect effects would be even stronger: Gas is an irreplaceable raw material for the production of preliminary products, for example in the chemical industry for the production of all kinds of basic materials or in the metal and electrical industry.
If production had to be shut down here, it would have huge social and economic consequences." Federico from Energy Brainpool says: "We need the Russian gas to fill up the storage facilities."
Energy supplies: EU pays 400 million euros a day for gas
How much money for energy supplies flows from Germany to Russia every day cannot be clearly quantified.
A look at the year 2021 provides an approximate figure. The federal government states that in that year an average of around 61 million euros flowed to Russia every day for oil, coal and gas.
This total may deviate from the current total, for example because the volume of imports has already been reduced or prices have changed.
According to estimates by economist Simone Tagliapietra from the Bruegel Economic Institute, the EU spent 15 million euros a day on coal from Russia at the beginning of April, around 400 million euros on Russian gas and 450 million euros on oil from the country.
The graphic shows the gas imports of Europe and Germany in comparison.
© AFP
Ukraine is also involved in the gas conflict
Despite the Ukraine war, Kyiv is still making money from gas.
Russia pays Ukraine $2.66 for every 1,000 cubic meters of gas it sends through.
In addition, there is a kind of distance fee, so that Kyiv gets almost one billion dollars a year for the transmission.
It is about the Soyuz ("Unity"), Bratstvo ("Brotherhood") pipelines and the Yamal pipeline, which is now affected by the gas freeze for Poland and Bulgaria.
Experts say more, rather than less, Russian gas has been flowing through Ukraine since the outbreak of war.
If Ukraine were to cut off the gas pipeline, it would be in breach of contract with both the West and the Russian state Gazprom – which is why the Zelenskyi government has so far not publicly discussed the issue.
