Russian President Vladimir Putin has questioned the quality of North Stream turbine repairs to be returned from Canada, explaining why the North American country has delayed it.
“I will tell you why Canada did that. Because it produces oil and gas itself and plans to tap the European market. This decision is not based on politics or even our special operation. It is pragmatic motives related to trying to enter the European market. Because they are planning to develop gas production in their country. That is all! And this competition is at every step,” he said during a plenary session of the forum “Strong Ideas for New Times”.
“Now they say they are going to bring that machine back,” he continued. – But in what quality? What are the technical parameters there after this repair? Maybe they will take it there and shut it down at some point. And that’s it! And Nord Stream-1 will stop!”
As EADaily reported, Gazprom earlier said that “to date it has not received official documents from Siemens allowing it to supply a gas turbine engine for the Portovaya CS in the conditions of sanction restrictions imposed by Canada and the EU”. “Gazprom also drew attention to the fact that the guaranteed return of the engine sent for repair under sanctions restrictions and the subsequent overhaul of other engines for the Portovaya CS directly affects the safe operation of the Nord Stream pipeline.
In mid-June, Gazprom reported that a gas compressor unit had not been returned from repairs and the company was forced to reduce Nord Stream’s capacity by 100 million cubic metres to 67 million cubic metres. Siemens attributed the situation to Canadian sanctions, which do not allow returning the equipment from Montreal. Canada later agreed to make an exception from sanctions.
On July 19, during his visit to Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters, “…we are told that we will soon receive this machine from Canada, but Gazprom has no official documents to this effect yet. But of course we have to get them because it’s our property, it’s Gazprom’s property. And Gazprom must receive not only the metal, not only the machine, but the documents as well. Both legal documents and technical documentation.
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