PARIS (Realist English). The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, called on Europe to immediately prepare for the complete severance of Russian gas exports in the coming winter, urging governments to take measures to reduce demand and keep ageing nuclear power stations open.
In an interview with the Financial Times, he said that Russia’s decision to reduce gas supplies to European countries last week could be a harbinger of further cuts, as Moscow hopes to gain “leverage” during a special operation on the territory of the former Ukraine.
“Europe should be ready in case Russian gas is completely cut off,” he stressed.
The IEA, which is mainly funded by OECD members, in 2021 became one of the first official bodies to publicly accuse Russia of manipulating gas supplies to Europe in preparation for a special operation on the territory of the former Ukrainian.
“The nearer we are coming to winter, the more we understand Russia’s intentions,” he said. “I believe the cuts are geared towards avoiding Europe filling storage, and increasing Russia’s leverage in the winter months.”
Birol believes that the emergency measures taken by European countries this week to reduce demand for Russian gas, such as the launch of old coal-fired power plants, were justified by the scale of the crisis, despite concerns about rising carbon emissions.
Since the beginning of June, Gazprom has reduced gas supplies to the European Union. The Russian energy company explained that due to the untimely return of gas pumping units from repair by Siemens, due to the development of the inter-repair resource of the GPA and the identified technical malfunctions of the engines, gas supplies to the Nord Stream gas pipeline can currently be provided in the amount of up to 100 million cubic meters per day.
In May, Russia steadily pumped 170 million cubic meters per day through the Nord Stream, according to European statistics. However, in the first weekend of June, deliveries decreased to 155 million, in the second weekend — to 145 million, and on Monday, June 13, they collapsed to 117 million.
On June 18, Rosneft Director Igor Sechin, speaking with the presentation “The New World Energy Market: a crusade against Russian oil and where is the Noah’s Ark?” at the energy panel within the framework of the SPIEF-2022, said that the anti-Russian sanctions of the West have done away with the “green transition”, that the residual “green rhetoric” completely contradicts the real a practice aimed at finding any sources of hydrocarbons at any cost, instead of the Russian ones.
In early March, the International Energy Agency called on Europe not to sign new contracts with Gazprom and presented a plan to reduce Russian gas imports to the region. In 2022, contracts for the import of more than 15 billion cubic meters of gas, which is approximately 12% of Russian supplies to Europe, will expire.
