Russia is about to shut off some of Germany’s gas
London (CNN Business)Russia is about to shut off its natural gas supplies to Shell’s German customers.
Gazprom (GZPFY), the Russian state energy giant, said on Tuesday it would suspend natural gas exports to Shell (SHLX) starting Wednesday because the company had failed to make payments in rubles.
“Shell Energy Europe Limited has notified Gazprom Export LLC that it does not intend to make payments under the contract for the supply of gas to Germany in rubles,” Gazprom said in a statement on its Telegram account.
Gazprom said Shell would lose up to 1.2 billion cubic meters worth of annual gas supply — just a tiny fraction of the 95 billion cubic meters the country consumes each year, according to Germany’s economic ministry.
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The United States achieved net energy independence in 2020, but that has not insulated the nation from the roiling of energy markets in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Europe has been a large consumer of Russian natural gas, and the effort to wean itself, with the help of the United States, has strained markets and endangered global efforts to address the climate crisis.