The Italian Minister for Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, warned this Saturday that a new increase in the price of energy is expected in Italy after Russia announced the closure of the Nord Stream gas pipeline for maintenance, EFE said.
“The two-week closure of Nord Stream for maintenance will result in an increase in the price of gas and this means that there will be even less gasoline and prices will risebecause the gas market is speculative and there will be more accumulation,” Cingolani said in a televised interview quoted by EFE.
Pipeline operator Nord Stream announced that it will close the two channels carrying Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea for 11 days in July to carry out planned repairs.
According to Cingolani, this is on top of the 15% less gas Italy already receives from Russia, where Italians import about 40% of the gas they need.
Even so, the minister assured that Italy already has 60% of the stocks stored and wants to reach 90%, which he considers “an achievable goal”.
Cingolani said that if Russia decided to stop exports, “Italy would suffer less than other European countries”, even if it had to face “a difficult winter”, but ruled out that for now “restrictions will have to be imposed”.
For his part, the Italian minister defended the proposal to put a ceiling on the price of gas that is being studied in the European Union.
“Europe imports three quarters of russia’s gas through its gas pipelines: who is it going to sell it to if europe doesn’t buy it, it’s a lot of work to liquefy and sell it, so we can afford to create market conditions, which doesn’t mean strangling it but avoid crazy price spikes,” he said.
He added that the reference under discussion “is between 80 and 90 euros per megawatt/hour” and that “the challenge is to convince the most skeptical European countries, starting with the Netherlands”.
Source: Newscutters
