Russia Halts Nord Stream 1 Gas Flow to Europe Again

Facts

• Early Wed., Russia's government-owned energy giant, Gazprom, shut off natural gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for maintenance. Gazprom said the cutoff, announced earlier in August, is only temporary.
• The Russian energy giant said it will be conducting three-day work at a compressor station, and that service maintenance is required every 1k hours of operation.
• This is the latest in a series of halts, with Germany calling these cuts politically motivated, while Russia has claimed the increase in interruptions has been aggravated by equipment delivery delays due to Western sanctions.
• Europe is bracing itself for a possible winter energy crisis and is now filling up its gas storage tanks, with the EU's overall storage levels currently at an average of over 80% full, compared to 66% last year.
• Natural gas prices have reached record levels in recent weeks; roughly nine times the level of a year ago.
• Gazprom expects to resume operation of Nord Stream 1 on Saturday.

Sources: Business Insider, Daily Mail, Al Jazeera, CNBC, and New York Times.

Narratives

• Anti-Russia narrative, as provided by Business Insider. Russia is using its gas supplies to try to create an economic crisis on the continent, as it looks to hit back against Western sanctions. It's clear that Moscow is using natural gas as a weapon of war, and Europe must prepare for the worst-case scenario of a complete interruption of supplies.
• Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by Tass. Gazprom is committed to meeting its gas export contracts, but Western financial sanctions have seriously diminished the pipeline's capacity and posed challenges to maintenance, meaning Gazprom simply can't fulfill them as it usually would.

Predictions