There is little Russia can do to help with urgent repairs required to malfunctioning Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline equipment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
Russia cut gas supplies via Nord Stream 1, its main gas pipeline to Europe, to just 20% of capacity last week, saying that a turbine sent to Canada for maintenance had not yet come back and that other equipment also needed repair.
This signalled a deepening of a row in which Moscow has cited turbine problems as its reason for cutting gas supply via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
“There are malfunctions which require urgent repairs and there are certain artificial difficulties which were caused by sanctions,” Peskov said.
“This situation needs a fix and Russia has a little ability to help here,” he added.
Germany’s Siemens Energy ENR1n.DE, the manufacturer, has said it had no access to the turbines on site and had not received any damage reports from Gazprom GAZP.MM and so had to assume the turbines were operating normally.
In a separate statement on Monday, Russian state gas company Gazprom GAZP.MM said that its gas output was down 12% to 262.4 billion cubic metres from January to July, while exports to non-CIS countries fell by 35% from the same period a year ago.
