The fear is that Russia will no longer supply us with gas in the winter. But to do so, it would have to temporarily shut down its gas fields in the Barents Sea. This is technically complex, would damage Russia for decades and would cost a lot of money.
Russia’s heaviest weapon against the West is its natural gas, and Germany in particular is vulnerable. The amount of gas flowing through Nord Stream 1 from Vyborg in Russia to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has been throttled since mid-June. After ten days of maintenance, it has now dropped to 20 percent of the actual capacity of around 150 million cubic meters per day.
The fear seems justified that Russia will use its gas weapon even more severely and, at the latest, when it gets cold here in winter, will stop gas supplies altogether. Then things would get serious, because even now the gas storage facilities in the country cannot be filled up with reserves in the summer, as is usually the case, which would suffice for the entire heating period from October to March.
Russian strategy is easy to calculate. If the first factories come to a standstill due to a lack of gas and perhaps even private households start to freeze, the public mood in the country should change. Russia would then have an easy time pushing through a variety of demands if it promises to turn on the gas tap again: an end to sanctions, a halt to political and military support for Ukraine, and so on.
But it is questionable whether there is really more to the threatening gesture. Because Russia cannot stop the flow of gas to Europe that easily. This is for purely technical reasons. The gas flowing through Nord Stream 1 comes primarily from gas fields in the northern Barents Sea. They are connected directly to the pipeline. So if no more gas is to flow through Nord Stream, Russia would also have to stop production in its gas fields.
But that’s not so easy. “The temporary shutdown of oil or gas wells is something that corporations try to prevent at all costs,” explains Canadian science journalist Philippe Gauthier. The reason: underground gas fields are usually under great pressure. Once they are tapped, the gas shoots through the holes to the surface – continuously.
The raw material lies in the earth, just like oil, not in a large basin, but in the cracks and holes in the rock, mostly in sandstone. If gas has been pumped out of it for some time, the pressure slowly decreases. If there is no pumping power through the borehole, sand, water, other hydrocarbons and loose rock seep into the sandstone and clog pores and veins. If the field is tapped again later, the performance is usually lower, in the worst case the daily production is halved.
In addition, abandoned gas fields are a safety risk. Gases such as methane can escape from the rock without controlled pumping, either to the surface or to nearby groundwater. When oil prices fell at the beginning of the Corona crisis and many fracking fields in the USA were temporarily closed, the reservoirs were therefore partially sealed with cement – this also reduces possible production later on. Russian engineers would also have to consider such measures if they wanted to shut down the gas fields in the Barents Sea.
In any case, not only is production reduced in a reopened gas field, the reopening can also severely damage the equipment. Deposits build up in the pipes that bring the gas from the sea to land, which can clog the pipes. “Reopening offshore drilling is so complicated that it’s the last resort for corporations,” says Gauthier. The costs are up to 500,000 euros per well, and special teams are required for the work.
An alternative would be for gas that is continuously escaping under the sea to be diverted somewhere else instead of through Nord Stream. But even that is not so easy. The fields in the Barents Sea are only connected to Europe by pipelines. China is supplied via pipeline to East Siberia. Tubes from the Barents Sea to there would be thousands of kilometers long and would have to be built over years.
A second possibility would be for Russia to liquefy the gas and deliver it to other countries by tanker, in the same way we want to get gas from the USA and Qatar in the future. But this requires special port terminals. Although Russia has one near Vyborg, where Nord Stream also starts, the port there is already operating at the limit of its capacity. In the short term, it cannot be expanded until winter either – in addition, due to western sanctions, there would probably be a lack of building materials.
A third option would be to divert the gas from the Barents Sea to gas storage facilities in Russia and store it there until Europe buckles and begs for Russian gas again. But Russian storage capacities are limited, and Russia, like Germany, is filling up its storage facilities for the winter. This would only become a serious option towards the end of the heating period, for example from February.
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The last option would be to direct the gas to the surface and burn it off in a controlled manner. We know such sights from Kuwaiti oil wells during the Iraq war in 1991. It is a tool that is frequently used around the world. The World Bank estimates that 144 billion cubic meters of gas are simply burned off each year. That is more than one and a half times the consumption in Germany. However, only certain amounts of gas can be burned safely. In addition, this causes high emissions and, last but not least, Russia would literally burn money with it.
Despite all the technical problems, Russia could still turn off the gas supply to Europe completely. However, it would then incur high financial costs for shutting down the gas fields and later reopening them, losses from burning billions of cubic meters of gas, and long-term damage to its production.
Alternatively, Russia can also reduce production to the technical minimum. It is difficult to define where that is, however, as it also depends on the circumstances of the respective gas field. A study from the USA defined the economically viable minimum as 500 cubic meters per well per day. In Canada, the legal minimum in some provinces is 10,000 cubic meters per day. So the range is large. In addition, gas fields such as those in the Barents Sea usually consist of hundreds of boreholes.
One thing is certain: A complete gas stop from Russia to Europe would be technically difficult and very expensive and time-consuming for Russia. It is therefore correspondingly unlikely. Nonetheless, the country can certainly further throttle the current flow of gas through Nord Stream 1 from 20 percent of normal capacity.
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