German chancellor resists pressure to cut off Russian fossil fuels.
By: Melissa Eddy
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/07 ... tw-nytimes
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, left, with Robert Habeck, the economy minister, on Monday. Finding alternatives to Russian fuel “cannot be done overnight,” Mr. Scholz said.Credit...Pool photo by Clemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock
The German chancellor pushed back against the suggestion of imposing an embargo on oil and natural gas from Russia, admitting that his country is too dependent on Russian fossil fuels to survive cutting off supplies.
Europe has deliberately exempted energy supplies from Russia from sanctions,
Chancellor
Olaf Scholz said in a statement on Monday.
At the moment, Europe’s supply of energy for heat generation, mobility, power supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way.
He said that while his government had been focused on coming up with alternatives for Russian energy, it
cannot be done overnight.
Oil, natural gas and coal imported from Russia account for some 68 percent of Germany’s energy needs.
For years the United States warned Berlin that it was overly dependent on Russia to meet its energy needs. In 2019, as President
Donald J. Trump clashed with
Angela Merkel,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/worl ... nmark.html Germany’s chancellor at the time, over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, he said it
really makes Germany a hostage to Russia.
Senator
Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who was also bitterly opposed to the gas link, said it would encourage Russian
military adventurism.
Germany responded by repeatedly insisting that Russia had been a reliable partner throughout times of tension, including the Cold War, and that the pipeline could be used for leverage against Moscow.
Germany is in no way dependent on Russia, least of all in energy questions,
Heiko Maas, the foreign minister under Ms. Merkel, said in response
https://www.welt.de/newsticker/news1/ar ... rueck.html to a similar statement from Mr. Trump.
But late last year, natural gas prices began breaking one record after another as winter set in and Washington warned that President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was massing troops on the border with Ukraine. On Feb. 22, Mr. Scholz announced that he would mothball the pipeline
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/busi ... ussia.html indefinitely. Two days later, Russia sent its troops rolling into central Ukraine.
Most Germans, so far, appear ready to bear the brunt of the cost for weaning their country off Russian fossil fuels. In a survey last week, 66 percent of respondents said they supported curtailing Russian energy imports, even if it meant paying more for heating and electricity.
That may become a reality either way. Oil prices jumped about 14 percent on Monday, with Brent crude trading at about $129 a barrel — up from about $65 in early December — after Secretary of State
Antony Blinken said
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/0 ... n-00014441 on Sunday that the United States was consulting with its partners in Europe about a ban on Russian oil imports.
Shell said it was limiting sales of heating oil to some of its wholesalers in Germany,
Bloomberg reported
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business ... in-germany on Monday. A spokeswoman for Shell declined to comment on the report, which said the company was trying to ensure that contracts could be met amid the disruptions and shortages on the energy market.
The German government has stressed that the country’s energy supply is secure for this winter and into the summer, but Mr. Scholz has been exploring ways to move away from Russian imports in the short term. One of the most obvious would be to suspend plans to close the country’s last nuclear power stations by the end of this year and delay the shutdown of power plants that burn lignite, or soft coal, by 2030.
Markus Söder, the governor of Bavaria, Germany’s largest state, proposed keeping the last three nuclear reactors going for an extra three to five years. (One of these reactors is in Bavaria.) It’s a suggestion that would have been unthinkable as recently as last year: Germans have broadly supported the idea of giving up on nuclear power over fears of a potential disaster, such as the one that took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.
Of course an extension would be technically possible,
Mr. Söder told
ZDF public television on Monday.
The question is whether it is wanted politically.
The government is drawing up a plan to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian gas, the economy minister,
Robert Habeck, has said. But initial data indicates that extending the life of the three nuclear reactors would do little to solve Germany’s energy dependence, he said.
He suggested that Germans find other ways to save.
All citizens could do their bit,
he told reporters in Berlin last week.
Cut down on your energy use if you want to hurt Putin a little.
