President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suggested late Tuesday that natural gas would resume flowing to Europe after the Nord Stream 1 pipeline’s maintenance shutdown, but warned that supplies may be severely curtailed.
Speaking to reporters in Tehran after meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, Mr. Putin said that shipments via Nord Stream 1 had been hampered by repairs necessary for turbines made by the German company Siemens. Even before the pipeline was shut down on July 11 for annual maintenance, flows from Gazprom, Russia’s energy giant, had been reduced to only 40 percent capacity.
European leaders have been bracing for Russia to keep the pipeline, the main artery between Russia and Germany, offline after the maintenance work ends on Thursday, in retaliation for opposing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. But some analysts have pointed out that if Russia ended gas flows to Europe, it would lose an element of its leverage over Europe in the economic battle it has launched since the invasion of Ukraine.
Gazprom has blamed the reduced flows on a missing turbine that had been sent to Montreal for repairs and could not be returned because of sanctions against Russia. German officials disputed Gazprom’s claim.
Since then the German government has secured the return of the Siemens turbine from Canada, but Mr. Putin said that another one was now in need of refurbishing. “If one more comes, then it’s good, two will work. And if it does not come, there will be one, it will be only 30 million cubic meters per day,” he told reporters. That’s less than 20 percent of the pipeline’s capacity of 160 million cubic meters of gas per day.
Records on a Nord Stream website indicated that a tiny amount of gas flowed through the pipeline on Tuesday afternoon, in an apparent test.
