FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Europe will continue to need a certain level of Russian gas supplies if its industries are to remain competitive, the CEO of oil major TotalEnergies said on Wednesday, pointing to the defunct and partly damaged Nord Stream pipelines.
The debate surrounding Nord Stream, the pipelines that pumped Russian gas to Germany until 2022, has picked up in recent weeks, fuelled by hopes of a truce between Moscow and Ukraine. That has led some policymakers to weigh whether the fuel could eventually be brought back.
Russia for decades supplied Germany with gas before first reducing and then stopping supplies via Nord Stream in 2022.
Three of Nord Stream 1 and 2’s four lines were damaged by subsequent blasts, while one line remains intact but has never been used.
“I would not be surprised if two out of the four (came) back to stream, not four out of the four,” Patrick Pouyanne told an industry event in Berlin. “There is no way to be competitive against Russian gas with LNG coming from wherever.”
He said that Europe’s strategy to diversify its energy resources made sense but that the continent should “be careful not to have the same situation with the U.S. in the future”, in a reference to growing U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas.
“I think it will be interesting to see if we’ll resist to the cheap Russian gas, or not,” Pouyanne said, pointing out how relevant cheap energy was to industry in Europe, particularly in Germany.
“I think central Europe will not fully resist,” he said.
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz, editing by Thomas Seythal and Joe Bavier)
