Russia Resumes Gas Flow to Europe After Scheduled Maintenance

Elvis Dunderhoff July 21, 2022

Apparently, there was never any threat of Russia shutting off the gas to Europe permanently.

This was scheduled, annual maintenance, and Russia turned the gas back on when they were finished with it.

We were all hoping they would just leave it off, and let the Europeans either freeze to death, or cancel this war against Russia.

AP:

Natural gas started flowing through a major pipeline from Russia to Europe on Thursday after a 10-day shutdown for maintenance, the operator said.

But the gas flow was expected to fall well short of full capacity and the outlook was uncertain — which leaves Europe still facing the prospect of a hard winter.

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany had been closed since July 11 for annual maintenance work. Amid growing tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, German officials had feared that the pipeline — the country’s main source of Russian gas, which recently has accounted for around a third of Germany’s gas supplies — might not reopen at all.

Operator Nord Stream AG said that gas started flowing again Thursday morning, and its network data showed gas beginning to arrive after the scheduled end of maintenance at 6 a.m.

Deliveries were expected to fall far below the pipeline’s full capacity, as they did for weeks before the maintenance break.

The head of Germany’s network regulator, Klaus Mueller, said Russia’s Gazprom had notified deliveries Thursday of only about 30% of the pipeline’s capacity. He later tweeted that actual deliveries were above that amount and could reach the pre-maintenance level of some 40%.

That wouldn’t be enough to resolve Europe’s energy crisis. “The political uncertainty and the 60% reduction from mid-June unfortunately remain,” Mueller wrote.

When Gazprom reduced the flow last month, it cited alleged technical problems involving equipment that partner Siemens Energy sent to Canada for overhaul and couldn’t be returned because of sanctions imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Canadian government earlier this month gave permission for the turbine that powers a compressor station at the Russian end of the pipeline to be delivered to Germany.

The German government has rejected Gazprom’s technical explanation for the gas reduction, charging repeatedly that it was only a pretext for a political decision to sow uncertainty and further push up energy prices. It has said the turbine was a replacement that was only supposed to be installed in September, but that it’s doing everything to deprive Russia of the pretext to reduce supplies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Gazprom still hadn’t received the relevant documents for the turbine’s return, and on Wednesday questioned the quality of the repair work. Putin said that Gazprom was to shut another turbine for repairs in late July, and if the one that was sent to Canada wasn’t returned by then the flow of gas would decline even further.

So, Russia is leaving open the option of shutting the gas off.

Good.

Remember when the Russian agent Donald Trump said that being completely dependent on Russia for gas was a bad idea, and that it was nonsensical for America to be paying billions of dollars to protect Germany from Russia when at any time Russia could completely shut down Germany by shutting the gas off?

They acted like he was insane.

But it is totally pointless for Europe to pretend like they can exist without Russian gas.

It’s like the US claiming they can have a war with China when much or most of their military equipment needs parts from China. Also, everything else the US needs to exist comes from China.

It’s all a bluff, and China and Russia are now calling bluffs, as the decline of the US is so obvious.

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