Miller: Siemens cannot carry out regular overhauls of Nord Stream

MOSCOW, 31 Aug — PRIME. Siemens has practically no opportunity to provide regular overhauls of units for the Nord Stream, it has nowhere to carry them out, said the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller.

“Today, Siemens has practically no opportunity to provide regular overhauls of our gas pumping units. Siemens simply has nowhere to carry out these works,” Miller said on the air of the Rossiya 1 TV channel.

Nord Stream, the main route for gas supplies from Russia to Europe, has been operating with restrictions since mid-June, and since the end of July, it has been operating at only 20% of its nearly 170 million cubic meters of throughput capacity per day. The Russian side emphasized that the limitation of supplies was due solely to foreign sanctions, which caused problems with the maintenance and repair of Siemens gas pumping units.

Recently, only one turbine provided work. Now the pipeline has been completely stopped due to its maintenance for three days, from 4.00 Moscow time on August 31 to 04.00 Moscow time on September 3.

Gazprom announced that the work on the Nord Stream will be carried out jointly with Siemens specialists. The German company, in accordance with the technical documentation, needs to service the unit every 1000 hours: inspect and clean the housing, check the operation of the valves and adjust the air flow control system. However, Siemens announced on August 31 that it was not involved in technical work on the gas pipeline.

After the maintenance is completed, in the absence of technical malfunctions of the unit, gas transportation will be restored to the level of 33 million cubic meters per day, Gazprom said.