The suspension of certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, announced by Germany on Tuesday, will have no direct impact on gas prices in the European Union, European Commission Executive Vice-President for competition policy Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday 23 February.
“There is no gas in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. What has been stopped is the approval of the pipeline that Nord Stream 2 needs to be put into operation, which means that stopping the approval process cannot have any effect on gas prices”, Vestager said, reiterating the Commission’s support for the German decision (see EUROPE 12896/2).
The day before, the Commission had also insisted on the EU’s ability to deal with all possible scenarios, including a complete cut-off of Russian gas supplies in response to EU sanctions.
Asked by EUROPE about the risk of such a scenario and the potential consequences for gas prices in Europe, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, director of theJacques Delors Institute’s Energy Centre, said the end of Russian supplies is possible. “We have to be prepared for it and hope that it doesn’t come to that”, he said.
Mr Pellerin-Carlin does not fear a price explosion, “but rather a risk of maintaining high prices when some were hoping for a decrease (especially on gas sold after the end of winter)”. He then clarified: “At this stage, there is no significant increase in the spot gas/oil markets”.
In Germany, which imports more than half of its gas from Russia, the Minister for the Economy and Climate, Robert Habeck, assured that his country was in a position to do without Russian gas in the long term, during an intervention on German public radio. However, he felt that a total halt to Russian gas supplies would result in a large shortfall in the energy market, leading to a rise in gas prices.
In Greece, a government spokesman announced the receipt of additional natural gas to avoid a disruption of supply, notably via the Trans-Adriatic pipeline, according to Reuters. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)