Germany will stop buying Russian coal from August 1 and will stop buying Russian oil on December 31. German Deputy Finance Minister Jörg Kukes said on Wednesday at the Sydney Energy Forum. Until recently, Russia supplied Germany with 40 percent of its coal and oil, according to Kukies.
Cookies said continuing to take coal and oil from Russia is not an option. “Anyone who knows the history of the Druzhba oil pipeline, which was already an instrument of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, knows that it is necessary to free yourself from this dependence.”
According to the deputy minister, the gas supply is a challenge. He is deeply concerned about “the huge vacuum that will be created if the European Union gets rid of the 158 billion cubic meters of gas that Russia supplies annually.”
In order to fill this gap, Germany is working hard to develop import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG), he said.
He stressed that the United States and Qatar together can supply Europe with about 30 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas, but this is still far from enough. “We can’t just ignore this problem,” Cookies said.
Unlike Germany, Brazil plans to buy as much diesel from Russia as possible, despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine and sanctions against other countries. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced earlier that an agreement with Russia was about to expire.
