Three out of four defects were not remedied and the turbine was then sent back in a way that was not contractually fixed: Russia continues to struggle with the technology for gas deliveries. It is unclear whether this is the prelude to further cuts.
In the dispute over reduced gas supplies from Russia to Germany, Gazprom is making further allegations against its German partners. The deputy head of the Russian state-owned company, Vitaly Markelov, explained that the return of a pipeline turbine serviced in Canada to Russia via Germany instead of directly did not correspond to the terms of the contract. In addition, the manufacturer commissioned with the maintenance, Siemens Energy, only corrected a quarter of the defects found.
The company did not want to comment on the new allegations, but referred to a statement on Wednesday. Siemens Energy explained that they currently have no access to the turbines on site and that the company has not yet received any reports of damage from Gazprom. "So we have to assume that the turbines are operational."
After invading Ukraine and the subsequent economic sanctions imposed by numerous countries, Russia cut gas supplies to the EU. While Russia gives technical reasons as justification, the federal government and other EU states speak of Russia as a pretext. In fact, the delivery cuts are a tit-for-tat for the sanctions. In this context, Gazprom had already been accused of breach of contract by the German side.
The dispute over gas supplies was sparked off, among other things, by the question of whether and under what conditions one of the turbines used to operate the gas pipelines would be returned to Russia after regular maintenance. Canada had refused direct return transport of the turbine because of the sanctions against Russia, but had accepted delivery to Germany for subsequent onward transfer to Russia. Siemens Energy had repeatedly denied the Russian account of being responsible for the delays.
Meanwhile, gas continues to flow into the German storage facilities despite the sharply reduced supply volumes from Russia. From Tuesday to Wednesday, the fill level increased slightly by 0.3 percentage points to 67.5 percent, the Federal Network Agency reported in its daily gas management report. Since Wednesday, the delivery volumes from the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline have only been around 20 percent of capacity.
