With nearly half of German homes relying on gas for heating, the country faces potential rationing if it fails to secure sufficient reserves.

Russian oil production in July was only 310,000 b/d below prewar levels, a fall of less than 3 per cent, while total oil exports were down about 580,000 b/d, according to the IEA’s latest monthly oil report.

Much of the world isn’t ready to follow US and European efforts to isolate President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

While the U.S. and European Union have already moved to ban imports of Russian oil into their ports, officials are now scrambling to curb Russia’s revenue from its oil sales globally and also avoid soaring energy prices during a time of high inflation.

Energy consumer prices are rising at an annual rate of nearly 40 per cent in the eurozone and 57 per cent in the UK, reflecting the surge in wholesale gas and oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is drastically eating into households’ disposable income.

The incentive to reduce gas consumption is huge after Putin reduced supplies to Germany via the Nord Steam 1 pipeline. The Dutch TTF gas contract, a European benchmark, is trading above 205 euros ($209) per megawatt hour, 10 times its average in the decade through 2020 and equivalent to about $350 per barrel of oil.

TotalEnergies said it would boost spending on short-cycle projects this year to help ease Europe's growing energy supply crunch. It expects its full-year capital spending to hit $16 billion in 2022 as it hopes to increase its sources of European natural gas and produce more LNG in the coming months.

The boom in STS activity involving Russian crude came as Moscow's seaborne oil exports defied Western sanctions to hit post-pandemic highs of 4 million b/d in April 2022.

Gas prices jumped more than 10% following Gazprom’s decision to reduce Nord Stream flows even further. Moscow has been curbing shipments to the EU for months over apparent retaliation for the bloc’s support for Ukraine and sanctions over Russia’s invasion.

Natural gas flows from Russia to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline will fall to 33 million cu m/d at 0700 Moscow time (0500 BST) due to the cessation of operations on another Siemens gas turbine at Portovaya

“The resumption this morning of flows along Nord Stream is likely to lead to a collective sign of relief from not just the European gas market, but from the wider economy,”

“Until now I thought we had shot ourselves in the foot,” Orban said. “Now it’s more like the European economy had shot itself in the lungs and it’s now struggling to breathe.”

"What is definitely problematic is to include energy into the sanctions, because a rule must be observed that the sanctions must have a greater impact on Russia than on the countries imposing the sanctions."

Закупки валют недружественных стран, прежде всего долларов и евро, сейчас невозможны. В обозримом будущем картина не изменится. Для нас эти валюты токсичны: наши резервы заморожены, активы бизнеса арестованы, вводятся ограничения на расчеты.

In June 2022 Gazprom had reduced gas supplies over the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 67 mcm/d (24.5 bcm/year).