Even at the height of a particularly sweltering summer, concerns are already growing about how bitter a winter Europe faces if Russian leader Vladimir Putin directs the state-owned energy giant Gazprom to cut off supplies of natural gas in revenge for the sanctions imposed on Moscow over the war in Ukraine.
Natural gas accounts for approximately 25 per cent of Europe’s energy consumption and, before the invasion, Russia supplied 40 per cent of it, primarily via its Nord Stream 1 pipeline running under the Baltic Sea to Germany and capable of delivering 55bn cubic metres of gas to the European Union annually.
