Europe will need to ration natural gas to meet winter heating demand if the Nord Stream pipeline doesn’t restart after planned maintenance, according to Ineos Group.
“It looks pretty dire for this winter now, as to whether we’ll get to the targets we need for storage,” Brian Gilvary, executive chairman of the UK chemicals company’s Ineos Energy business, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “If Nord Stream 1 doesn’t come back, it is inevitable. We will definitely see rationing in Europe.”
It follows a similar warning over winter gas shortages for Europe from Shell CEO Ben van Beurden last week.
Companies in Germany, Italy and France will look to curtail gas use in the event that Nord Stream stays shut, Gilvary said. The pipeline, which carries the fuel from Russia to Germany, went offline for annual maintenance this week.
Ineos, one of Europe’s largest gas users, struck a deal last month to buy 1.4 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year from US exporter Sempra over two decades.
