2024-02-20 18:41:04
The environmental organization Urgewald claims that Russian gas still flows into Germany through Belgian and Dutch LNG terminals. This was reported by the Funke media group, Day.Az reports with reference to TASS.
“The German government does not want direct gas imports from Russia, but indirectly Russian gas is still supplied. This is politically weak,” Urgewald spokesman Moritz Leiner told Funke. “The government should ensure that the import of Russian gas into the EU, as well as its re-export, is prohibited at the European level. Otherwise, it cannot be guaranteed that Russian gas will not end up in Germany,” he argued.
At the same time, the organization believes that in terms of climate policy and the impact on residents of regions where LNG projects are expanding due to demand from Germany, “there is no gas supplier country that would be problem-free.” This also applies to the USA and Norway, Urgewald noted.
In turn, the representative of the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag, an expert in the field of climate and energy policy, Andreas Jung, called for more clarity on the issue of the origin of gas imports to Germany. “The German government must ensure full transparency when it comes to the security of gas purchases,” he told Funke. At the same time, Jung emphasized that two years ago, at the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, the CDU/CSU bloc demanded from “the federal government regular reports on safe gas supplies even without Russian imports.” “Despite our requests, there are general assurances from [канцлера ФРГ] Olaf Scholz i [Главы Минэкономики ФРГ] Robert Habeck, but there are no reliable figures. They need to be presented now,” he concluded.
Germany began to refuse supplies of Russian energy resources after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine in February 2022. In particular, Germany does not receive gas via Nord Stream – both gas pipelines were damaged in 2022 as a result of sabotage in the Baltic Sea, one of them had not previously been certified by the German side. In the current situation, the government is counting on the construction of terminals for receiving LNG. The total capacity of existing floating terminals is estimated at 33 billion cubic meters. m of gas per year, which is half as much as was supplied in 2021 via Nord Stream.