Report: France braces for disruption of Russian gas exports to EU

PARIS, Mar 10 (PRIME) – France is preparing for the worst possible scenario of Russian natural gas exports to the E.U.  – either a complete halt od supplies or their disruptions due to the situation in Ukraine and sanctions, French news channel BFMTV reported on Thursday quoting sources.

France has been working on what to do if it is left without Russian gas for several days, and sources told the news channel that the government and the core energy companies, like Engie, TotalEnergies, Gaz de France, and others have been meeting daily.

An Engie source told BFMTV that the risk of gas supplies disruptions is low as Gazprom has always been a reliable supplier. Still, the country has to prepare for that, and the prime minister’s office asked the company to free as much gas supplies as it can.

The prime minister’s office said that France has to replenish the gas reserves as much as possible before the next winter, and counts on sea shipments of gas from the Asian countries, Japan, Egypt, Qatar, the U.S., or Australia, which should help replace half of Russian imports.

But a top manager of Elengy, a company that operates liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in Europe, told the news channel that LNG imports are a drop in a bucket, and that France would have to cut its gas consumption significantly.

End %%md/jst%%