Germany reduced gas imports from Russia to zero.

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.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant But OK. Switching to an EU perspective: "The share of Russia’s pipeline gas in EU imports dropped from over 40% in 2021 to about 8% in 2023. For pipeline gas and LNG combined, Russia accounted for less than 15% of total EU gas imports.
The drop was possible mainly thanks to a sharp increase in LNG import and an overall reduction of gas consumption in the EU." https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-supply/

https://cdn.masto.host/socialwildeboernet/media_attachments/files/113/454/702/150/382/915/original/20359a72044ea542.png

Felix Gilcher

@jwildeboer Like I said, we just happen to buy significant chunks of our gas via pipelines from countries that just happen to import significant quantities of Russian LNG. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant Yes, and while I at least try to put numbers behind my statements, you just hand wave around.

Felix Gilcher

@jwildeboer I do agree that the efforts on the EU level including when it comes to reducing total gas usage have been pretty effective. There are also states in the EU that basically have invested zero effort into reducing their dependency and that’s unacceptable. I just don’t agree that Germany is the shining beacon here.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

@xylakant But we agree that Germany reduced Russian gas imports to zero, I hope.