MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/. The Eurozone’s die-hard rejection of Russian gas is surprising, and decisions akin to Nord Stream 2's halt run counter to common sense and imperil the interests of the economy, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak wrote in his article for the Energy Policy magazine.
"It is surprising that European countries are consistently making decisions on plans to deliberately shun Russian gas, which until recently accounted for about 45% of imports. In particular, for political reasons, at the European side’s behest, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year has been frozen. Such decisions contradict common sense, economic feasibility, as well as the interests of the economy and the citizens of Europe, who are deprived of the opportunity to receive sufficient volumes of gas at an affordable price," Novak wrote.
In this situation, the Russian onshore gas transmission capacities of Nord Stream 2 will now be used to develop the gas supply to Russia’s northwestern regions, where the percentage of the development of local gas infrastructure is 57.3%, which is still below average domestically, the Deputy PM emphasized.
At the same time, in terms of already achieved indicators of gas infrastructure development, Russia significantly outranks Germany (47%), France (38%), Spain (32%), while "in Finland, Sweden and Norway, where the climate is similar to our country, the level of gas infrastructure development is only 3%, 1% and 0.2% respectively," he noted.
In early May, EU member energy ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss creating a unified procedure for the general storage of gas, as well as the common purchases of gas for all countries of the continent-wide bloc.
On May 18, the European Commission presented the REPowerEU plan, which provided for the abandonment of Russian energy resources by 2027 by increasing purchases from other countries, energy saving and "green generation".