The Russian state consortium Gazprom announced this Friday full suspension gas transit through the gas pipeline North Stream due to an oil leak detected during maintenance of the only compressor station still in operation. “Until the malfunction of the equipment is eliminated, the transit of gas through the Nord Stream pipeline is completely suspended,” Gazprom reported in its telegram account.
The announcement comes a day before the Russian gas company was to resume fuel supply to Europe through the gas pipeline – which was already operating at only 20% of its capacity – after completing three days of maintenance on a compressor station turbine. According to the gas company, representatives of the Siemens company, in charge of the maintenance of the Nord Stream turbines, verified the presence of the fault.
The European Commission (EC) has accused Russia this Friday of “cynicism” and of using “false pretexts” to justify the complete suspension of the flow of gas through the Nord Stream gas pipeline. “Gazprom’s announcement this afternoon that it will once again close North Stream 1 under false pretexts another confirmation from his unreliability as a provider. It is also a test of Russian cynicismsince it prefers to burn gas instead of fulfilling contracts,” said the spokesman for the European Commission, Eric Mamer, on his official Twitter account.
“safe exploitation”
While Moscow and Brussels exchanged reproaches, the Federal Service for Technical Supervision of Russia (Rostejnadzor) has warned that the detected problem did not guarantee the safe operation of the turbine. “In this sense, it is necessary to take the corresponding measures and suspend the operations of the Trent 60 turbine in relation to the serious violations that have been detected,” the note states. According to Gazprom, in the past similar oil leaks had been detected in three other turbines.
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This week, Gazprom president Alexei Miller had said that repairing the Nord Stream turbines at a specialized factory was now impossible due to western sanctions. “Siemens currently has practically no capacity to provide regular reviews of our turbines. Siemens simply has nowhere to carry out this work,” Miller told Russian public television.
The Kremlin has warned this Friday that the reliability of the Nord Stream gas pipeline is in danger, since there are no reserve equipment that can replace those that are out of service. “There are no technological reserves, only one turbine is working. Do the calculations,” said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov. Previously, Peskov argued that due to Western sanctions, the pipeline’s technical equipment cannot be renewed, and turbines that have been repaired cannot be returned to Russia without guarantees that they are not under the sanctions regime.