Russia signals Europe won't get extra gas without Nord Stream 2
BNN Bloomberg
Russia is signaling that it won’t go out of its way to offer European consumers extra gas to ease the current energy crisis unless it gets something in return: regulatory approval to start shipments through the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Russia is signaling that it won’t go out of its way to offer European consumers extra gas to ease the current energy crisis unless it gets something in return: regulatory approval to start shipments through the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
In exchange for upping supplies, Russia wants to get German and European Union approval to begin using the pipeline to Europe, according to people close to state-run gas giant Gazprom and the Kremlin.
“We cannot ride to the rescue just to compensate for mistakes that we didn’t commit,” Konstantin Kosachyov, a top pro-Kremlin legislator in the upper house of parliament, said in an interview, without specifying what Russia is seeking. “We’re fulfilling all our contracts, all our obligations. Everything on top of that should be a subject for additional voluntary and mutually beneficial agreements.”
As if to underline the point, the pipeline’s operator said Monday its first line is full of so-called technical gas and ready to begin operation, though it can’t ship it until regulatory approval is granted. That announcement came hours after European gas prices spiked on news that Gazprom had again bid for only a small amount of capacity to ship the fuel to Europe via other routes.
As surging fuel costs have caused increasing economic havoc, pressure has grown on Russia, Europe’s largest supplier, to pump more. Extra Russian gas is seen as the main way to avoid an even deeper supply crunch in the middle of the winter.
