More than four decades ago the CIA warned in a memorandum to then President Ronald Reagan that "the 5,633-km gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany is a direct threat to the future of Western Europe, it said, creating 'serious repercussions' from a dangerous reliance on Russian fuel."
Germany's largest pipeline operator, Open Grid Europe (OGE), managing over 12 000-km of natural gas pipelines throughout Germany, is planning even more with the construction of a 1000-km pipeline network for Carbon Dioxide (CO2) for the eventual transport of up to 18 million tons per year of the greenhouse gas from German industrial centers to North Sea ports.
As war continues to rage in the Ukraine, Naftogaz, the state energy company responsible for operating the country's network of 38,550-km of gas pipelines, works around the clock to service 12 million households in the Ukraine as well as myriad customers in the European Union.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's War of Aggression in the Ukraine has driven the oil and gas industry to rethink its relationship with the hydrocarbon - rich Russian Federation. The Druschba Oil pipeline has been central to that relationship.
In the wake of the 2022 winter which saw the gas storage fill levels sink to historic lows, the German Bundestag met over the weekend to affirm that the gas storage operators are required to fill storage facilities up to 90 percent of capacity by 1 November of each year. To this end the Bundestag passed a corresponding law.
Germany's Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck visited Norway earlier this month to discuss how Germany and Norway could work together to develop a hydrogen pipeline link between the two countries.
Open Grid Europe (OGE) and Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk Aktiengesellschaft (RWE), German powerhouses in the transmission and production of energy respectively, are teaming up to lead Germany and the rest of Europe (if not the world) in the development of a new hydrogen industry and infrastructure dubbed H2ercules.
Is it possible to replace around half of natural gas imports from Russia with Biogas from Germany, and thereby dramatically reduce Germany's dependency on Russian energy?
This is the question resonating around Germany and other European countries nowadays, as Vladimir Putin's Russia continues its War of Aggression on the Ukraine.
A mere few months ago, the Dutch government was dead set on closing the estimated 450 billion cubic meter in the ground Groningen gas field for good, despite the higher prices that gas was then netting.
A few months ago, around the time that the final pipeline segments were put down into the Baltic to complete construction of the 1200-km Nord Stream 2, we wrote on these pages that Nord Stream 2 was experiencing a painful and difficult birth. Fast forward to today and the threatening massive ground war in the Ukraine and possibly other countries in Europe since 1945, we've entered a different
