On the eve of the war in Ukraine, Russia provided a third of Germany’s oil, around half its coal imports and more than half its gas
on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. On May 2nd Christian Lindner, the finance minister, and Robert Habeck, the economy minister, signalled that the government was prepared to support an EU ban on Russian oil imports. German backing enabled the European Commission to announce, on May 4th, that it would propose such an embargo for the end of the year, though the 27 member governments must all agree. Yet for industry-heavy Germany, oil presents a far smaller problem than gas.
Russian coal and oil is already being phased out. The share of German oil imports coming from Russia has declined from 35% to 12% since the start of the war. Coal imports have fallen from 50% to 8%. On April 26th Mr Habeck said that all preparations for an end of Russian oil in Germany should be in place within days. The government has also begun to seize Russian-owned energy assets. On April 4th
Germany remains highly dependent on Russian gas. The share coming from Russian fields has been reduced from 55% to 35% since the war. Further reductions will be painful. The first problem is that Germany receives all of its gas via pipelines and does not yet have any working terminals to import. In mid-April the finance ministry put aside €2.5bn to lease floating terminals that could be working by winter.
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