Germany reduced gas imports from Russia to zero.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

(and please. If you reply with counterarguments, add your source(s) the way I always try to do. Fact based discussions are just that much more valuable to me. thx!)

mxk

@jwildeboer agree. Just said the same to a friend earlier this week.
Trading Russian for American gas is probably going to bite us.

Leszek

@jwildeboer Because Russia closed the valve to Germany? Let's not give German government credit for something they were forced to accept.

Moving off the limited LNG coming in through channels other than the pipeline was just a logical next step after the pre-winter "oops a pipeline turbine is broken and we can't fix it with all those sanctions" blackmail.

Gas prices jump as Russia cuts German supply

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline is now operating at just a fifth of its usual capacity.

(www.bbc.com)

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@makdaam You know perfectly well that "closing the valve" wasn't the only reason. It was a political decision. The result stays the same. Germany doesn't pay for Russian gas while other EU members still do. And the German government invested significant money in ensuring this independence from Russian gas. As you also know.

Felix Gilcher

@jwildeboer Germany however does import gas from Spain and Belgium. Which import gas from Russia. So we do import Russian gas, we just like it laundered.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@mxk Still better to NOT pay Russia so they can finance the war against Ukraine with that money, IMHO.

The Penguin of Evil

@jwildeboer I am hoping that if Trumpy goes oil gas oil gas, he'll piss off the Saudi's who will then decide to bury the US fracking and gas industry by flooding the market a bit. Would probably take out the Russians and a few others too at $40 a barrel.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@etchedpixels Yep, while we normal people stoically continue to install solar panels and batteries, ride electric bicycles and cars and thus make the fossil fuel mafia irrelevant. We will get there. #Solarpunk is the new #Steampunk

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant How much gas is imported that way and how big is the percentage of that imported gas to the total use n Germany? Numbers, please.

Leszek

@jwildeboer I'm not questioning the effort it took to actually implement the zeroing off Russia's gas. It just wasn't Germany's decision. See https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-germany-prepares-crisis-plan-abrupt-end-russian-gas-sources-2022-05-09/ and https://www.ft.com/content/6c6352c3-cb60-48e5-aa5e-7cf02328f544
You could argue that connecting those two causally is just journalistic speculation.
Well, it would add up if Germany didn't block sanctions against buying Russian LNG in EU https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-blocks-first-ever-sanctions-russian-gas/
So answer to your actual question about NL & BE is: because it's legal and not an issue according to DE&HU.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@makdaam Wow. You are throwing Germany and Hungary together to make an argument? The only argument I can see from your toot is that Germany made a moral decision while other EU countries did not so far.

Leszek

@jwildeboer Is the information about Germany blocking the 14th sanction package for more than a week (which among other things was supposed to block LNG imports from Russia across EU) untrue? Am I misinformed?

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@makdaam Are my sources that show that Germany stopped importing gas either via pipeline or as LNG in 2022 wrong? Could other countries have decided themselves to not import Russian gas? Countries are sovereign and can decide themselves, last time I looked. Just like Poland continues to burn coal in significant amounts, last I looked ...

Felix Gilcher

@jwildeboer I refer to the sources you posted above. It’s also relevant to take into account that Germany receives most of its gas from pipelines and that includes LNG offloaded at other ports - we do have growing, but still limited capacity for unloading LNG. The source you posted is unclear on how LNG unloaded at other European ports is accounted for.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant From the source I gave: Spain exported 0.12 bpm LNG to Germany. Germany imported in total 6.44 cbm nLNG. So we are talking about 1,8% of total imports. Spain imported 6.68 cbm LNG from Russia, so even more than the total imports of Germany. Germany however didn't force Spain to import Russian LNG, AFAICS.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant In the official German gas import statistic Spain isn't even mentioned. Source: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/a_Gasversorgung_2023/start.html Belgium is a more difficult case. 40% of their LNG imports are Qatar, 40% Russia. Plus significant pipeline amounts from other European countries. So calculating how much Russian gas is exported to Germany is complicated.

Leszek

@jwildeboer
Congratulations to Germany on finally arriving here a decade later. It's good they did, It's sad it took so long. Even sadder others didn't arrive yet.

Regarding the coal: it does and it makes me sad that Poland keeps using almost half as much brown coal as the biggest polluter in EU.
The move to renewables is slow and there's not enough investment in the grid infrastructure to handle individual producers. I wish both PL and DE did more in that area.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@makdaam On that last sentence we fully agree.

Felix Gilcher

@jwildeboer The primary LNG importing ports that Germany relied on have historically been in Belgium and the Netherlands, both of which import significant amounts of Russian gas. So either our purchases from there are Russian LNG or domestic production which gets sold to Germany and backfilled with Russian LNG. Neither of which is great.

My more general point is: Looking at individual countries in a European market is comparatively low value.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant But concluding that Germany is one of the few EU countries that fully stopped buying Russian gas stays relevant, IMHO.