Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday accused Russia of blocking the delivery of a turbine needed to keep gas flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Europe.
The system is “available and functional,” said Scholz when he was standing next to the turbine during a visit to the manufacturer Siemens Energie.
“There is no reason why this delivery cannot take place,” said Scholz.
The turbine has received “all the permits” required for export from Germany to Russia, he said.
The pipeline operators would only have to say “that they want the system and provide the necessary customs information for the transport to Russia,” says Scholz.
Transferring the missing unit to Russia is “really easy,” he added.
Russian energy giant Gazprom has blamed the unit’s delayed return from Canada, where it was being serviced, for the initial drop in gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline.
Germany, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, has dismissed the decision to limit supplies as “political”.
Deliveries via the subsea power link were reduced to around 20 percent of capacity in late July after Gazprom halted operations of one of the last two operational turbines due to the “engine’s technical condition”.
Since invading Ukraine in February, Germany has been working to wean itself off of Russian energy imports.
Amid a scramble by Europe’s largest economy for other sources of energy, Scholz said on Wednesday it may make “wise sense” to keep Germany’s remaining three nuclear power plants running despite a long-planned shutdown at the end of the year.
The government has said it will await the outcome of a new “stress test” of the national electricity grid before deciding whether to stick with the phase-out.
The extension of the service life of the plants has triggered a heated debate in Germany, in which the parties in the Scholz coalition are at odds.
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