GAS SHORTAGE IN EUROPE ?

RUSSIAN GAZPROM SUSPENDS ITS DELIVERIES

IN FRENCH ENGIE

Suspension of Gazprom deliveries to France for unpaid invoice

And the Russian giant Gazprom, notifying the French group of not having received “in full the financial sums due for deliveries”, announced Tuesday evening the total suspension of its deliveries to the French group Engie from Thursday September 1, 2022.

"Gazprom Export has notified Engie of a complete suspension of gas deliveries from September 1, 2022 until full receipt of the financial sums due for the deliveries", indicated the Russian group in a press release published Tuesday evening on its website. Telegram account.

Under a decree by Russian President Vladimir Putin signed at the end of March, Gazprom specifies that "it is prohibited to deliver more natural gas to a foreign buyer if the buyer has not made payment in full within the set period in the contract”.

Reserve stocks?

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, wanting to “reassure Engie customers”, however said that the French group had “found other sources of supply”, without specifying which ones, in the Daily magazine on the TMC channel.

Deliveries of Russian gas to Engie had already dropped significantly since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, recently dropping to just 1.5 TWh (terawatt-hour) per month, according to Engie. This figure is to be related to “total annual supplies in Europe greater than 400 TWh” for Engie, adds the main gas supplier in France, of which the French State holds nearly 24%.

At the end of July, Engie had assured that it had significantly reduced its “financial and physical exposure to Russian gas”, which already represented only around 4% of its supplies. "It's completely within the margin of the flexibility of our portfolios, so we're not at all worried," said its managing director Catherine MacGregor at the time.

Last Thursday, France's gas stocks exceeded the 90% filling threshold for the winter (91.47% Tuesday morning), according to the European platform Aggregated Gas Storage Inventory (AGSI).

Still, the Europeans are rushing in dispersed order to find gas elsewhere, far from being ready for this challenge that they have imposed on themselves...

Europeans desperate for gas...

To counterbalance the drop in Russian deliveries, the different states of the European Union are indeed negotiating on their own with the gas supplier countries.

Emmanuel Macron's trip to Algeria last week, officially intended to strengthen relations between Paris and Algiers, led to meager negotiations to obtain more gas. .

France is not the first to try to obtain more gas from its Algerian partner. Mario Draghi came to sign a new contract in July for 4 billion m³ of additional gas for Italy. Spain had negotiated Algerian gas a few weeks before. Other European countries have chosen alliances with different partners, such as Norway and the United States. For his part, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, traveled to Canada to sign an agreement on Tuesday night for gas deliveries which will begin around 2025.

A good way for Justin Trudeau's government to count on a reliable partner who will finance its new infrastructures for liquefied natural gas and hydrogen. In addition, some countries find themselves unable to discuss with other gas suppliers for reasons of simple geography. Viktor Orban's Hungary has gone to ask for more gas directly from Moscow, while the new interim government in Bulgaria is tempted to do the same.

In this context of energy crisis, "The Jacques Delors Institute has been pleading for ten years for the creation of a common gas purchasing center at European level", a structure that already exists for uranium, recalls Thomas Pellerin-Carlin .

A difficult solution, however, to put in place insofar as the choice of the energy mix falls within the competence of the States, with very different situations...