Putin may believe that energy pressures - fuel price increases, households unable to heat their homes, industry floundering, and all of it hastening a recession - could exploit cracks in the Western alliance and tear apart Europe itself. Russia is using energy as a weapon,” said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.Įurope’s reliance on Russian gas has always been a weapon available to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and now he is wielding it. The proposal calls on EU countries to ration gas and decrease usage by about 15 percent across the bloc. On Wednesday, the European Union confronted this crisis, putting itself on almost a wartime footing with an emergency plan to reduce gas consumption now to avoid more dramatic shortages this winter, even as the current heat wave is exacerbating the continent’s energy crunch. European countries have also set storage targets for natural gas to head off disaster this winter, but Russia’s decrease in deliveries has made those already ambitious goals much harder to reach.
Europe is seeking alternatives but is finding it hard to secure speedy and affordable replacements for what once flowed easily via pipeline. Even as European leaders have sanctioned Russian coal, started phasing in sanctions on seaborne Russian oil, and vowed to reduce Russian natural gas imports, Europe has struggled to wean itself off Russian energy, particularly natural gas. It is already getting difficult to insulate Germany’s economy, and Europe’s more broadly, from Russia’s energy threats - and that is further destabilizing the global economy.Įurope before the war got about 40 percent of its gas from Russia, mostly through pipelines Germany relies on Russia for about a third of its gas imports. Experts said this was a pretext, and a pretty flimsy one at that, but it still got Germany and Canada to act. In June, Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom slashed the amount of gas delivered through Nord Stream 1 by 60 percent, a decision it blamed on the West, saying a necessary turbine was out for repair in Canada but stuck there because of sanctions. Russia had already reduced and reduced the amount of natural gas it exports to Europe in recent weeks. More critically, the threat of Russia stopping or slowing gas deliveries to Europe persists, a harbinger for even more economic disruption on the continent, and for a long, cold, and tumultuous winter. Gas is flowing through Nord Stream 1 again as of Thursday morning, though at less than half of its capacity.
Instead, Russia might keep it closed, or drastically reduce its flows, as retaliation against Germany and the rest of Europe for sanctions and their support for Ukraine. That’s why Germany - and the rest of the European Union - was nervous that when the 10-day maintenance was scheduled to end on July 21, the pipeline wouldn’t come back online. But typically, a war isn’t raging in Europe. Nord Stream 1, the pipeline that delivers natural gas from Russia to Germany, was shut down this week for annual maintenance.
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