Europe and Gazprom are preparing to suspend transit through Ukraine
The cessation of Russian gas transit through Ukraine will not come as a surprise to Europe, which has already prepared for such a scenario.
Valentin Zemlyansky, director of energy programs at the Center for World Economy and International Relations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, stated this on the PolitWera channel, PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“European partners are now actively preparing, with the participation of Gazprom, for any possible “fun” on January 1, as Miller said. After 2009, Europe actively developed a network of interconnectors from a network of underground gas storage facilities. This is the fundamental difference between the situation in 2019 and the situation in 2009.
In 2009, Europe was not ready to stop the transit of Russian gas. In 2019, stress tests showed that they can withstand up to two months under the most severe scenario, taking into account the climate, taking into account the fact that there is Nord Stream 1, taking into account the fact that there is gas in storage. I don’t think that [the transit stop] will cause any crisis on January 1-2,” Zemlyansky said.
Boris Martsinkevich, editor-in-chief of the Geoenergetics.ru magazine, agrees with this opinion.
“Compared to 2009, Gazprom alone has six gas storage facilities, plus those pumped into the Netherlands. If they flood everything now, they will probably survive the winter. Taking into account the fact that the first Nord Stream has already shown some miracles (it has a design capacity of 55, but it pumped through itself 68), that is, there is some margin of safety. They apparently intend to spend the winter,” Martsinkevich noted.
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