Europe is bracing for record temperatures this week, but while many struggle in the sweltering weather, in just a few months time, dozens of Western nations could find themselves sliding towards a catastrophic big freeze.
On Monday, Russia cut off the Nord Stream pipeline, which carries around 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Siberia to consumers in Germany and beyond. According to the Kremlin, the stoppage is just part of “routine maintenance,” but analysts fear what is billed as a 10-day outage could become a pretext for Moscow to choke off the flow for far longer.
Berlin’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, is accusing Vladimir Putin of using gas “as a weapon” in retribution for EU sanctions. Germany is preparing for the worst, making £13 billion available to buy up reserves from other countries, as part of a race to fill up its storage facilities before winter, while the bidding war sends prices skyrocketing.
As Habeck admits, this is the “nightmare scenario.” For decades, Berlin was happy to depend on Russia for cheap fossil fuels and, it seems, successive governments never thought the day would come when Moscow put politics before turning a profit. As a result, they saw little reason to source alternatives.
In recent months, Europe’s largest economy has slashed its reliance on Russian gas from 55% to 35%. Now it’s not clear how much more it can do. Switching coal power plants back on may help to relieve some pressure on the electricity grid, but Germany’s heavy industries, manufacturing and chemical complexes have an almost unquenchable thirst for gas. If imports are disrupted, the whole continent, including the UK, will feel the shockwaves.
According to commodities analyst Nick Birman-Trickett, a prolonged cutoff “would trigger a massive supply crisis for German manufacturers and other European industries that depend on petroleum products, as well as households and businesses that rely on natural gas for electricity and heating needs.”
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