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Russia shuts down vital gas pipeline for ‘repairs’ and sends a chill through Europe

Europe’s looming winter fuel crisis has deepened after Russia shut down a key gas pipeline to Germany, claiming the indefinite stoppage was due to what experts say is a minor oil leak.

Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea, had been due to resume operating on Saturday (Australian time) after a three-day halt for maintenance.

But Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian gas exporter, said on Friday it could not safely restart deliveries until it had fixed an oil leak in a key turbine. It did not give a new time frame.

However, Siemens Energy, which normally services Nord Stream 1 turbines, said such a leak did not represent a valid reason to stop the pipeline from operating.

It also said the Portovaya compressor station, where the leak was discovered, has other turbines that would allow Nord Stream to re-start normal operations.

“Such leaks do not normally affect the operation of a turbine and can be sealed on site. It is a routine procedure within the scope of maintenance work,” the company said.

An economic weapon

Moscow has blamed sanctions, imposed by the West after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for hampering routine operations and maintenance of Nord Stream 1. Brussels says this is a pretext and Russia is using gas as an economic weapon to retaliate.

EU council president Charles Michel said Russia’s move was “sadly no surprise”.

“Use of gas as a weapon will not change the resolve of the EU. We will accelerate our path towards energy independence. Our duty is to protect our citizens and support the freedom of Ukraine,” he tweeted.

Russia has denied previous allegations of using gas as an economic weapon or manipulating the gas market.

Wholesale gas prices have rocketed 400 per cent since August 2021, hurting European industry and households as demand recovered from the COVID pandemic and because of the Ukraine crisis.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would turn off supplies to Europe if Brussels imposed such a cap.

“There will simply be no Russian gas in Europe,” he wrote on the Telegram app in response to Ms Von der Leyen.

Reduced deliveries via Nord Stream, alongside lower gas flows via Ukraine, another major route, have already left European states struggling to refill storage tanks for winter and prompted many to trigger emergency plans that could lead to energy rationing and stoking concerns about recession.

Group of Seven finance ministers agreed on Friday to put a price cap on Russian oil exports. Moscow said it would halt oil sales to countries imposing the cap, adding that the move would destabilise oil markets. Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of crude and fuel combined.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested earlier on Friday there could be more disruptions to deliveries via Nord Stream 1.

Further disruptions likely

“It’s not the fault of Gazprom that the resources are missing. Therefore, the reliability of the entire system is at risk,” he said when asked if more outages could be expected.

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said last week that sanctions meant Siemens could not carry out regular maintenance.

European Union governments have been preparing for a possibly complete halt to deliveries by Russia after Gazprom initially reduced flows in June and then again in July.

This week’s maintenance was announced at short notice.

Germany, which is particularly reliant on Russian supplies, has been racing to fill its storage tanks before winter. That storage is nearly 85 per cent full, but Berlin says reaching a 95 per cent target by November 1 will be tough unless companies and households use less fuel.

The EU has exceeded its 80 per cent target for storage to be full by October 1, ready for when heating use picks up. But that may not sustain Europe through the winter if Russia keeps the taps closed.

Some energy-intensive European companies, such as fertiliser and aluminium producers, have already cut output due to sky-high power prices. Domestic consumers have also reined in use to save on escalating energy bills.

Russians farewell Gorbachev – but Putin is absent

Thousands of Russians have filed past the open casket of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, with many saying they wanted to honour his memory as “a peacemaker” who dismantled totalitarianism and gave them their freedom.

Mr Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, died on Tuesday aged 91. His body lay in state on Saturday in the grand Hall of Columns in central Moscow in the tradition of previous Soviet leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

Flanked by an honour guard of two rifle-wielding members of the elite Kremlin Regiment with the hall’s 54 chandeliers emitting only a dim glow, the former president’s body lay in an open casket with his face and upper body visible.

Mr Gorbachev is best known in the West for helping end the Cold War, reducing his country’s nuclear stockpile, and for unwittingly presiding over the demise of the Soviet Union. But his legacy still divides opinion inside and outside Russia.

President Vladimir Putin briefly paid his respects to Mr Gorbachev on Thursday at the hospital where he died, but stayed away from Saturday’s memorial event, with the Kremlin citing his busy schedule.

Nor was Mr Gorbachev granted a full state funeral unlike his nemesis Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet president and the man who named Mr Putin as his successor, who died in 2007.

Some saw Mr Putin’s no-show as a calculated snub from a former KGB officer who has rolled back many of Mr Gorbachev’s reforms and has said he regards the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

Mr Gorbachev was, like Mr Putin, crushed by the demise of the Soviet Union but is blamed by many Russians for setting in motion a reform process that spun out of control and emboldened many of the USSR’s 15 republics to break away.

-with AAP

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