BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 26. Europe has to be ready for supply cuts from Russia at any moment, European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told reporters on July 26 on the sidelines of the extraordinary Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council, Trend reports.
"We will discuss today the EU’s preparedness for the upcoming winter. Yesterday’s announcements by Gazprom underline once again that we have to be ready for the possible supply cuts from Russia at any moment. To be ready for that we have to act right now, take care of preparedness, we have to tackle this crisis right now. By doing so, we will reduce our demand preemptively. This allows us to fill the future gap between supply and demand," she said.
Russian Gazprom has announced a drastic cut to gas deliveries through its main pipeline to Europe from Wednesday. The company said it was halting the operation of one of the last two operating turbines due to the technical condition of the engine, cutting daily gas deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20 percent of the pipeline’s capacity.
Simson recalled that the Commission proposed a regulation on reducing gas demand in Europe by 15 percent only a week ago.
"Every volume of gas that we managed not to use can help other member states who are facing very difficult challenges of that disruption. Indeed, member states are using different volumes of gas, interconnections are not sufficient for some member states. Filling of our gas storages continues, which means that our member states managed to attract more gas in recent weeks than they are consuming this summer," he explained.
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