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Russia has completely halted gas supplies to Europe via a major pipeline, saying repairs are needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Russian state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, said the restrictions on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would last for the next three days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Russia has already significantly reduced gas exports via the pipeline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It denies accusations it has used energy supplies as a weapon of war against Western countries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline stretches 1,200km (745 miles) under the Baltic Sea from the Russian coast near St Petersburg to north-eastern Germany.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It opened in 2011, and can send a maximum of 170 million cubic metres of gas per day from Russia to Germany.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The pipeline was shut down for 10 days in July – again for repairs, according to Russia – and has recently been operating at just 20% capacity because of what Russia describes as faulty equipment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The president of Germany’s network regulator has said the country will be able to cope – if Russia resumes delivery in the coming days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
“I assume that we will be able to cope with it,” Klaus Mueller told Reuters. “I trust that Russia will return to 20% on Saturday, but no one can really say.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
European leaders fear Russia could extend the outage in an attempt to drive up gas prices, which have already risen sharply in the past year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
However, today’s announcement was not expected to impact prices immediately. The UK’s main natural gas price was in fact down by more than 15% on markets, as of 14:00 BST on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The steep rise threatens to create a cost of living crisis over the winter months, potentially forcing governments to spend billions to ease the burden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
On Tuesday, French Energy Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher accused Russia of “using gas as a weapon of war”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
She was speaking after Gazprom said it would suspend gas deliveries to the French energy company Engie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has rejected the accusations – and insisted that Western sanctions have caused the interruptions by damaging Russian infrastructure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
He insisted that that “technological problems” caused by sanctions are the only thing preventing Russia from supplying gas via the pipeline, without specifying what the problems were.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The most recent controversy has been over a turbine which arrived in Germany after being repaired in Canada and which Russia refused to take back, arguing it was subject to the Western sanctions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Germany, however, denies this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Earlier this month, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said the pipeline was fully operational and said there were no technical issues as claimed by Russia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Earlier this week, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised to intervene in energy markets, telling a conference in Slovenia that they are “no longer fit for purpose”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
“We need a new market model for electricity that really functions and brings us back into balance,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Before the conflict, Germany had supported, though not certified, the \u20ac10bn (\u00a38.4bn)\u00a0Nord Stream 2 pipeline\u00a0– which runs parallel to its namesake – but halted operations after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia has completely halted gas supplies to Europe via a major pipeline, saying repairs are needed. The Russian state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, said the restrictions on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would last for the next three days. Russia has already significantly reduced gas exports via the pipeline. It denies accusations it has used energy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182309"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182311,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182309\/revisions\/182311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}