Brussels, 19/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - Angela Merkel, who welcomed Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on Tuesday, minimised her country's future dependency on Russian gas now that it has decided to renounce nuclear power.
The German Chancellor hosted a bilateral summit with Russia in Hanover on Tuesday 19 July. She gave her assurance that Germany's scheduled cessation of nuclear power by 2022 would be largely offset by coal-fired power plants or renewable energies. She said the rise in Russian gas imports would be limited. “This is not an anti-Gazprom speech”, she said, explaining: “I just want to say that our objectives are not exaggerated. They are perfectly reasonable. Any remaining energy needs could no doubt be met by Gazprom”, she told the press after the summit. “The more affordable Russian gas is, the more likely it is it will be bought”, Merkel added. With 39 billion cubic metres of gas imported from Russia in 2010, Germany is Russia's biggest customer.
Energy was at the heart of the Russian-German intergovernmental discussions. Moscow hoped to step up its presence still further in the gas supply sector, by taking advantage of the fact that Germany plans to no longer use nuclear power by 2022. In addition to increasing supplies to Germany, mainly via the German-Russian North Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, to be inaugurated in October, Russia also hopes to develop its gas-fired electricity generating plants.
The cooperation agreement sealed last week between the German energy company RWE and Russian Gazprom caused quite a stir, with experts underlining the threat that such a partnership would have on the pan-European gas pipeline project, Nabucco, which is directly rivalled by another Gazprom project further south, that Russia jointly steers alongside the Italian electricity company ENI. (E.H./transl.jl)