Italy gets 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia. It is delivered via a pipeline that runs through Austria. But that is no longer possible, according to the Russian gas supplier Gazprom. Why remains open.
According to the Italian supplier Eni, Russia has stopped supplying gas to the Mediterranean country. The Russian company Gazprom has announced that it can no longer deliver gas through Austria "today", Eni said. An explanation is not given in the short message. Russian gas normally arrives at and is distributed from the Italian-Austrian border town of Tarvisio in Italy.
An Eni spokesman told the Ansa news agency that Gazprom had announced that it was no longer able to deliver to Austria. According to information from Eni, the Alpine Republic itself continues to receive Russian gas, the spokesman said.
By the time war broke out in Ukraine, Italy had received around 40 percent of its gas from Russia. Then the government in Rome and the semi-state corporation Eni concluded agreements with a number of other countries - such as Algeria - in order to minimize dependence on Moscow. In recent months it has been said that Italy still receives around 25 percent of its gas from Russia. In the past few days, the delivery quantities had fallen sharply.
Other EU countries that were supplied by Gazprom have also had experiences with sudden Russian supply stops in recent months: In the case of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline leading to Germany, it was said in September that an alleged oil leak from a gas turbine was the cause. This representation was rejected by the turbine manufacturer Siemens Energy. Four leaks were recently found after several explosions on the German-Russian Baltic Sea pipelines Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. The lines were not in operation, but filled with gas for technical reasons. An act of sabotage is suspected.
