Emergency meeting over gas cut-off
As energy prices skyrocket, government examining alternative scenarios in case Russia stops supply entirely
In response to disruptions in the supply of Russian natural gas, fears of a more permanent cut-off and rapidly rising energy costs across Europe, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chaired an emergency meeting at his office in Athens on Thursday.
Mitsotakis was briefed by a special crisis management committee of the Energy Ministry on the alternative scenarios it has elaborated in order to ensure the country’s energy sufficiency in the case of reduced supply or a complete cut-off of Russian natural gas to Europe in the fall and winter.
According to government sources, all the data on production, imports, exports and storage were presented at the meeting and it was found that Greece is in a more favorable position compared to other EU countries.
The course of global fuel prices and their effect on the economy’s fiscal health were also evaluated during the discussion, which was attended by the leadership of the Finance Ministry, among other officials.
According to an earlier report by Kathimerini, Greece has reduced its consumption of Russian gas, but its dependence still remains high.
More specifically, in the first half of this year, 13.3 terawatt-hours of Russian gas was imported into the country compared to 16.9 terawatt-hours in the same period last year. This amounts to a decrease of 21.3%.
In the same period, Greek dependence on liquefied natural gas increased, with LNG imports rising by 47.3%, from 11.7 terawatt-hours last year to 17.3 terawatt-hours in the first half of this year.
Compared to just 15 last year, 39 LNG shipments had arrived at the Revithousa terminal by the end of June. Naturally, a large number of these were bound for other nations, primarily Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.
The biggest problem is that there has been absolutely no decrease in the reliance of power generation on gas during the past six months. In the first half of this year, power producers consumed exactly the same amount of gas (20.42 terawatt-hours) as they did in the corresponding period in 2021.
In essence, Greece would suffer if Russia stopped supplying gas to the continent as a whole (and not only through the Nord Stream pipeline), as electricity price predictions for August are already dreadful.
