Russia-Ukraine crisis: How Europe may cope if Putin shuts off gas [Aljazeera]

[Johnatan56]

Around 35 percent of the EU’s natural gas comes from Russia. And as political tensions have mounted around the build-up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, there has been much discussion of whether Russia, the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas, might weaponise that dependency to get its way.


Of the 167.7 billion cubic metres of natural gas Europe imported from Russia in 2020, Germany bought the most – 56.3 billion cubic meters – followed by Italy, with 19.7 billion, and the Netherlands, with 11.2 billion.


But what really determines a country’s vulnerability to Moscow’s energy export policies is not how much it buys but what part Russian gas plays in its national energy mix.

Analysis: How Europe may cope if Putin shuts off gas

Around 35 percent of the EU’s natural gas comes from Russia.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[Johnatan56]

Interesting tidbits:

Energy crisis planning​

Some of that is already happening.


This month, Europe imported three times the amount of LNG it did last January, business data company Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS) concluded.

And:

Experts say that since 2014, when the Crimea crisis sparked similar concerns about Russian gas, there’s been some progress in this area. For example, there have been improvements to continental transport networks for gas and the ability to bring gas from west to east.

The gas market itself has not reacted hugely to these fears, confirms Tom Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at ICIS.

“If Russia proactively cuts off the gas, it would be very difficult for a German utility to say, ‘we want to sign another 10-year contract with a Russian counterparty’,” Marzec-Manser said. “That is precisely why Russia cutting off gas is extremely unlikely. It damages their own business and reputation in the medium and long term.”

“We have to prepare for almost any scenario but we don’t want to speculate,” a spokesperson from Uniper, a German power company, said. Uniper is among Europe’s largest electricity suppliers and one of five companies backing the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia into Europe. “What we can say with certainty: Russia has been a reliable partner since the 1970s and there have been no supply interruptions, not even during the Cold War.”

And this is also interesting:

This is despite the fact that Spain doesn’t actually import any gas from Russia.

But Spain is Europe’s leading LNG importer and there, LNG import prices determine the overall gas price, Zachmann notes. Because of rising demand for LNG and fears of a Russian gas cut-off, those prices have increased.

So yeah, the tensions are not really leading to gas shortages, more that LNG import is causing price increases.
This is besides the fact that last 2020/2021 winter was pretty extreme, so used up a lot of gas storage. This year so far seems a lot more mild, just started a bit earlier.

 

[Nicholas]

 

[Johnatan56]

Issues with that argument, Germany doesn't have an issue with nuclear being shut down causing issues, it's heating that's the problem there if any, not power generation (about half their usage is heating in residential, services, and agriculture, quarter is industry, quarter is power).

The gas reliance will probably start dropping quite a bit by 2030, since it's a hold-over to meet 2030 goal, don't think it will increase that much this decade. It won't be decades of reliance, it will probably be a decade at most, and it seems to be moving away fast since lots of money is pouring into renewable generation and storage. Most of Germany's issue is the extreme delays on the grid infrastructure upgrades that don't allow more renewable online, unable to handle peak generations, they were supposed to be done 2020 or so, currently they are all up to ~2028.

Video is right and not right, it's over-exaggerating quite a bit of it. Germany could handle not having gas, it's more not want war.

 

[Paul Hjul]

The gas issue is overplayed frankly. If Russia missteps Germany takes the gas and doesn't pay for it, quite simply its reparations. If Russia stops the supply of gas Germany gets gas from Qatar.

The reason Germany isn't where it should be in dealing with Putin is domestic political complications from a living former Chancellor. Putin has been very good at disrupting domestic politics in countries to ensure that he has at least one putz in every state.