The European Commission will ask Member States next week to immediately reduce gas consumption. That writes business newspaper Financial Times (FT) Monday based on a leaked draft document.
The news follows a warning from the energy agency IEA. The agency said on Monday that the alternatives to Russian gas are no longer sufficient to replenish energy supplies for next winter. IEA CEO Fatih Birol thinks that gas consumption must be reduced immediately in order to be able to fill the gas supply sufficiently.
The EU is also proposing this to avoid a possible disaster scenario. Acting together now will be less painful and disruptive and will avoid having to take unprepared and uncoordinated measures in a crisis situation. FT.
Next week’s leaked proposal will first be voluntary gas reduction. It is expected that the final document will also have targets for reducing gas consumption. What those goals look like is not yet known.
The document also warns that targets may become mandatory if gas supply suddenly comes to a standstill. Currently, there is still natural gas coming from Russia, but it is much less than in previous years: in June the gas flow between Russia and the EU was about 30 percent lower than the average of the last five years.
Gazprom invokes force majeure
The call from the European Commission and the warning from the IEA do not come completely out of the blue. Reuters reported on Monday that Gazprom invoked force majeure in the export of gas in a letter dated 14 July.
The German companies Uniper and RWE, among others, are said to have received the letter from Gazprom. According to insiders, the declaration of force majeure applies to the supply via the Nord Stream 1 (NS1). It has been shut down since 11 July due to planned maintenance.
Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN AMRO, takes into account in conversation with Reuters that the supply via NS1 will not be resumed. The Austrian OMV does not want to go that far. For the time being, that company assumes that supply will resume once work is completed next Thursday.