Today Gazprom suspended gas deliveries to Latvia […]due to the violation of the gas sampling conditions
the Russian company said in a statement on Telegram, without further details.
The announcement comes as Gazprom drastically reduced deliveries of Russian gas to Europe through the Nord Stream pipeline this week, citing the need for turbine maintenance, as European countries scramble to top up their reserves. for winter.
Russia had already cut its delivery volume twice in June, saying the pipeline could not function normally without a turbine that was being repaired in Canada and had not been returned to Russia because of sanctions imposed by the Westerners following the Russian assault on Ukraine.
Since then, Germany and Canada have agreed to send the equipment back to Russia, but the turbine has not yet been delivered.
Westerners accuse Moscow of using the energy issue in retaliation for the sanctions adopted following the offensive against Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Photo: via Reuters / SPUTNIK
The Kremlin assures for its part that the sanctions are at the origin of technical problems of the gas infrastructure and that Europe therefore suffers from measures which it imposes on Russia.
Steadily declining exports
The process of maintaining technical devices is made extremely difficult by the sanctions adopted by Europe
spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week, while assuring that Gazprom remains a reliable guarantor of its obligations
and deliver as much as necessary and as much as possible
.
Russia has been hit with several rounds of Western sanctions after its military intervention in Ukraine launched on February 24.
Russian gas exports to Europe, particularly to Germany and Italy, have been steadily declining since the start of these sanctions. Gazprom also interrupted its gas deliveries to several European customers who refused to pay in rubles.
Baltic states for their part stopped importing Russian gas on April 1, according to the Latvian storage company Conexus Baltic Grid.
On Friday, the Latvian natural gas trader Latvijas Gaze said it had resumed its gas purchases from Russia, without giving the identity of the suppliers and ensuring that it paid for its deliveries in euros.
According to official gas flow data released by Conexus, gas deliveries to the Latvian pipeline rose sharply since July 21, before coming to an abrupt halt on Friday.
In an attempt to prevent the risk of shortages next winter, the 27 members of the European Union (EU) agreed on Tuesday on a plan providing for each country to everything possible
to reduce, by March 2023, its gas consumption by at least 15% compared to the average of the last five years over the same period.
Russia represented until last year some 40% of the gas imports of theEU.
