Officials in Germany are urging residents and businesses to start saving energy as the country faced a third day of reduced natural gas flows from Russia, a critical energy supplier to Europe’s largest economy.
“The time to do this has come,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, in an urgent public appeal posted to Instagram late Wednesday. “Every kilowatt hour helps in this situation.”
Mr Habeck said the situation was serious but insisted that supplies to Europe’s largest economy had been secured. But the head of the federal agency for monitoring gas and electricity networks warned that if Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant, continued to curtail gas flows, the situation could become more dangerous once temperatures drop.
This comes as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, along with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, arrived in Kiev on Thursday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
For decades, Germany depended on Russia as its main supplier for natural gas, which comes to the country overland through an extensive network of pipelines, many dating back to the Cold War era. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February caused Berlin to turn to the United States, Norway and the United Arab Emirates for natural gas, leading to a 20 percent drop in imports from Russia.
Gazprom said on Wednesday it would cut natural gas supplies via a major pipeline to Germany by 60 percent, a day after announcing a 40 percent cut. The pipeline, Nord Stream 1, carries gas directly from fields in Russia to Germany, which diverts some of the flow to other countries in Europe.
Gazprom has said the cuts were necessary because a turbine for a compressor station in northwestern Russia was sent in for repair and failed to return in time.
Several other countries in Europe also reported a reduction in gas flow across their borders.
The Czech Republic’s main gas supplier, CEZ, also reported that supplies from Gazprom had been reduced by a similar amount to Germany, also citing technical difficulties, Ladislav Kriz, a company spokesman, said on Thursday. Austria’s OMV energy company said Gazprom had informed it about gas cuts, but declined to provide further details.
Gazprom’s supply to Italy fell 15 percent on Wednesday and remained at that level on Thursday, Italian energy company Eni said in a statement. Gazprom blames the drop on problems at a plant feeding the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Eni said.
Given that most Europeans do not heat their homes in the summer and air conditioning is relatively rare, the situation is bearable for now and officials in all four countries emphasized that the drop in supply posed no threat.
But if Russia continued to supply 40 percent of its previous gas flows over the course of a few weeks, that could deteriorate, said Klaus Müller, head of the German federal agency responsible for gas, electricity and telecommunications.
“It is imperative that we fill the storage facilities now to get through the winter,” Mr Müller told the Rheinische Post.
Mr. Müller and Mr. Habeck rejected Gazprom’s explanation of technical problems, suggesting that they were a pretext for Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, to drive up the price of natural gas in Europe. Gas prices have risen by 70 percent this week to more than 140 euros per megawatt hour on the TTF exchange on Thursday.
“Yesterday we were informed that further amounts of gas were being reduced,” Mr Habeck told the Germans in the Instagram video, which had been viewed more than 141,000 times on Thursday afternoon. “That confirms what we feared from the start: Putin is reducing the amount of gas. Not everything at once, but step by step.”
He pointed to similar behavior by Russia in recent months, pointing out that Gazprom was cutting off gas supplies to Poland, Bulgaria and Denmark.
At the same time, he insisted that Germany be able to continue to replenish its gas reserves in preparation for winter. Storage levels have become chronically low in recent years, in part because Gazprom allowed them to dip into several major natural gas tanks it owned in Germany.
The government passed a law earlier this year requiring owners of natural gas storage facilities to ensure they are 65 percent full each August and by October, when the heating season begins.
Mr Müller’s office said on Wednesday that storage levels in German facilities are 55 percent of capacity. Nevertheless, he called for the legally required temperature that landlords must guarantee to lower rental housing by two degrees, and to provide incentives for companies to reduce energy consumption.
“Gas reaches Germany,” said Mr Habeck. “We have no problem with the supply, but the quantities have to be bought on the free market and it gets more expensive.”
Gaia Pianigianic reporting contributed.
