What if Russia cuts off gas supplies? On March 31, Vladimir Putin signed the decree obliging “enemy countries to open “special accounts in rubles and euros with Gazprombank to make payments on Russian gas. The sanctionsexempt bank buys rubles during trading hours using the currency deposited on the Moscow Stock Exchange. A mechanism that could save goats and cabbages for the time being, even if the situation remains very delicate. Also because, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the Gazprom study also plans to close the gas taps in the European capitals. Nothing official, mind you. The news has not been confirmed by the company, but the mere fact that such a scenario has been leaked is a signal sent to the West, and in this case, European countries.
A bluff? Maybe. We know that Putin has to sell as much gas as we do to buy it. But in a scenario of tension and uncertainty like the one we are going through right now, nothing can be ruled out.
To date, Italy imports gas from Russia for about 38% of its needs. Without Moscow’s supplies, how long could it last? The Minister for Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, announced in midMarch that “if Russia shut off the gas tap tomorrow, we would have supplies for eight to nine weeks”. In short, our country would have enough gas for two months. The fact that winter is coming to an end could no doubt help, but the problem would reappear in a few months. At least for this year we won’t be left out in the rain. Then?
Should Italy prepare for gas supply disruptions, rationing? “But no. Unlike other countries, we have been on early warning for a month,” Cingolani assures Corriere della Sera, and that means that “day by day we monitor the progress of gas deliveries. And right now, gas continues to flow. come regularly, even more than a year ago”. On the fact that it can be counted on, “with a war going on it is obvious that it cannot be counted on. It is different he points out to observe the situation. In an emergency, keep an eye on the measures. The job of a government is just that. I repeat, we have been in early warning for a month, others for a few days”.
Italy’s plan to become independent from Moscow
But how does Italy proceed to compensate for a possible interruption in delivery? And how long will it take to find alternative solutions? “Our goal is to become independent from Russia very quickly,” Minister Cingolani told Tg1 yesterday. The question of a possible shortage of Russian gas supplies concerns “Italy and all of Europe, because this is a completely European problem,” and our country “is currently working very closely to diversify sources,” explained Cingolani. “We are working to quickly conclude contracts with other countries that can quickly replace the approximately 29 billion cubic meters of gas we import from Russia.” Plan “a” is therefore to buy gas from other countries, even if it is not easy is. This, the Mite’s owner warns, “is an issue of energy independence, but also of national security.” Adding to these measures “is the fact that we are increasing the number of regasifiers, ships that convert LNG into gas that is fed into gas pipelines” and “we are greatly accelerating renewables”.
According to the executive, these regasification platforms on floating units anchored near ports and the connection points to the gas grid would be operational for about 16 to 24 billion cubic meters in 12 to 18 months. Thanks to these regasifiers, Italy could increase imports of LPG from the United States,
The government is also investigating how to reduce the use of gas to generate electricity. Another alternative is to increase the flow rate of the Tap pipeline by about 10 billion cubic meters per year. According to Cingolani, this will take around 4565 months and require interventions in Albania and Greece at the compression stations.
The three crisis levels provided for in the “emergency plan”.
For the moment, however, Moscow’s taps remain open. Sources from Palazzo Chigi announced yesterday that “the government is not assessing the activation of the ‘state of alert’ related to the energy crisis”. For the time being, Italy remains in a state of early warning, as the mite decided on February 26: this means that the situation is being monitored and the ministry is preparing “extraordinary preventive measures to incentivize the filling the storage in advance in relation to those below normal Conditions applied procedure “.
The other two crisis levels provided for in the “Italian Gas System Contingency Plan” are “alert” and “emergency”. The alert is issued in the event of supply bottlenecks, for example in the event of unfavorable weather events, but also in the event of supply problems. In this case, a series of countermeasures would be triggered: temporarily reducing gas demand, then increasing imports from other sources, and finally using alternative fuels in industrial plants (could Italy reactivate coalfired power plants?).
Finally, there is a third level, the emergency level, which occurs when there is “a significant change in care or an interruption in care.” In this scenario, the government would be free to take more drastic measures: setting new temperature thresholds for domestic heating, forced reductions in the gas consumption of industrial customers, recourse to storage, suspension of the protection of the prices set by Arera. A scenario that is a long way off for the time being. But you can’t completely rule it out.