How Putin and the Amerikan Draghi got gassed …
During the phone call with Draghi, Putin says he wants to guarantee stable gas supplies to Italy. However, the Russian company Gazprom has not booked export capacity through the Yamal pipeline even for February. All the details
Prime Minister Mario Draghi had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin this morning. The two discussed the Ukrainian crisis, the importance of détente (Draghi seems to have insisted on this point) and bilateral relations.
WHAT PUTIN SAID TO DRAGHI
According to the Russian news agency TASS , also cited by ANSA , Putin said he was willing to continue to guarantee "stable supplies" of Russian natural gas to Italy. And Putin again, reports a note from the Kremlin, would have expressed satisfaction at his recent videoconference meeting with Italian industrialists : Enel, Pirelli and the Intesa Sanpaolo group were present, among others.
THE GAS QUESTION
The question of gas supplies is of great importance for the European Union, especially at this time of crisis in energy prices and strong military tensions between Moscow and Kiev, which are causing fear of the outbreak of a war.
Russia is Europe's largest supplier of natural gas: it alone accounts for about 41 percent of the bloc's total imports. For months, Moscow has been limiting fuel sales to the Old Continent, limiting itself to respecting contractual obligations but without booking additional export capacity.
WHAT IS GAZPROM (NOT) DOING
Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas company, has not booked space in the Yamal-Europe pipeline – one of the most important of those supplying Europe, passing through Belarus and Poland – for the month of February. In more than forty days there have been no westbound flows in the pipeline, a record .
Gazprom argues that the reduction in supplies, including those for Ukraine, is due to the decline in demand for fuel.
THE SCENARIOS IN CASE OF WAR
Should a conflict begin in Ukraine, it is possible that Russian gas supplies to the European Union could further reduce or even go to zero , both as a result of the Kremlin's retaliation against the sanctions promised by the West, and as a result of the fighting: about one third of Russian gas arriving in Europe passes through Ukrainian territory.
HOW MUCH RUSSIAN GAS MATTERS FOR ITALY
Italy is very dependent on gas imports, given the very low levels of internal production . The Russian one, in particular, represents 43 per cent of purchases from abroad; followed at a distance by the Algerian (about 23 per cent), the Norwegian one (11 per cent) and the Qatari one (10 per cent). Libya is worth less than 7 percent.
HOW MUCH THE EUROPEAN MARKET MATTERS FOR RUSSIA
If it is true that Europe depends on Russia for gas supplies, it is also true that Russia depends on the European market for its state budget, which is made up for 40 per cent of revenues from hydrocarbon sales (petroleum , mainly, and gas).
According to the Economist , if the Kremlin were to order the interruption of flows through the gas pipelines with Europe due to the Ukrainian crisis, Gazprom would suffer economic losses estimated between 203 and 228 million dollars a day. In the event that the blockade were to last three months – in the spring the demand for gas drops considerably, and therefore also the Russian blackmail would lose strength -, the losses for the company would reach 20 billion.
THE MEETING BETWEEN PUTIN AND ITALIAN ENTREPRENEURS
The meeting held last week between Putin and Italian entrepreneurs was organized by the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce, led by Vincenzo Trani.
Trani is Neapolitan but has lived in Moscow for about twenty years. In addition to chairing the Chamber of Commerce, he founded the microcredit company Mikro Kapital and the car sharing company Delimobil (whose board of directors has Matteo Renzi) . He is also honorary consul in Campania of Belarus, a country very close to Russia, practically subject. Trani had also been talked about for his promotion of the Russian Sputnik vaccine in Italy.
THE ITALY-RUSSIA TRADE
In the period January-October 2021, Italian exports to Russia amounted to 6.3 billion euros, compared to 5.8 in the whole of 2020 and 7.1 in 2019, before the pandemic. In the first ten months of last year, imports from Russia, on the other hand, were worth 11.3 billion.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/telefonata-putin-draghi-forniture-gas/ on Tue, 01 Feb 2022 15:07:24 +0000.