The Russian state consortium Gazprom announced this Friday the complete suspension of gas transit through the Nord Stream gas pipeline due to an oil leak detected during maintenance of the only compressor station still in operation.
"Until the malfunction of the equipment is eliminated, the transit of gas through the Nord Stream gas pipeline is completely suspended," Gazprom reported in its Telegram account.
The announcement comes a day before the Russian gas company was to resume gas supply to Europe through the gas pipeline - which was already operating at only 20% of its capacity - after completing three days of maintenance on a compressor station turbine.
According to the gas company, representatives of the Siemens company, in charge of maintaining the Nord Stream turbines, verified the presence of the fault.
At the same time, the Federal Technical Supervision Service of Russia (Rostejnadzor) has warned that the problem detected did not guarantee the safe operation of the turbine.
"In this sense, it is necessary to take the corresponding measures and suspend the operations of the Trent 60 turbine in relation to the serious violations that have been detected," the note states.
According to Gazprom, in the past similar oil leaks had been detected in three other turbines.
At the same time, the complete elimination of oil leaks in these devices "is only possible" in a specialized workshop, adds the Russian consortium, citing Siemens.
This week, Gazprom Chairman Alexei Miller said that repairing the Nord Stream turbines at a specialized factory is now impossible due to Western sanctions.
"Siemens currently has practically no capacity to provide regular reviews of our turbines. Siemens simply has nowhere to carry out this work," Miller told Russian public television.
The Kremlin has warned today that the reliability of the Nord Stream gas pipeline is in danger, since there are no spare equipment that can replace those that are falling out of service.
"There are no technological reserves, only one turbine is working. Do the calculations," said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov.
Previously, Peskov argued that due to Western sanctions, the technical equipment of the gas pipeline cannot be renewed, and the turbines that have been repaired cannot be returned to Russia without guarantees that they are not under the sanctioning regime.
