Wolfgang Kubicki sees “no good reason” not to put the second Nord Stream pipeline into operation. If Russia then supplies more gas, that will help the population and industry, and that will benefit Germany more than Putin. The Young Liberals, on the other hand, consider the demand to be naïve.
To improve the gas supply, FDP Vice Wolfgang Kubicki has spoken out in favor of opening the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline. “We should open Nord Stream 2 as soon as possible to fill our gas storage facilities for the winter,” Kubicki told the editorial network Germany. There is “no good reason not to open Nord Stream 2”.
If Russia’s President Vladimir Putin then stops supplying gas, Germany has lost nothing. “If more gas reaches us in this way, perhaps even the entire contractually guaranteed amount, that will help people not have to freeze in winter and our industry will not suffer serious damage,” emphasized Kubicki. Ensuring this is the top priority of the federal government. Precisely for this reason, other pipelines from Russia were not cut. “Once the gas storage tanks are full, we can close Nord Stream 2 again – and the other pipelines too, once we’ve become independent. But we’re not quite there yet,” emphasized Kubicki.
When the interviewer pointed out that Putin would exploit this as a great success, the Bundestag Vice President said that everything that ensures that more gas gets here is of more use to Germany than to Putin. “By the way, Putin’s greatest propaganda success would be if we ran out of gas while he was still making good money from us. That has to be prevented.”
The FDP youth organization Junge Liberale (July) reacted with sharp rejection to the demand. “It is completely incomprehensible to me how one can come up with such a bizarre demand,” said the federal chairman of the Julis, Franziska Brandmann. Putin is waging an energy war against Germany, said Brandmann, who is also a member of the FDP federal executive board. “Anyone who thinks they want to lift sanctions against Russia in this situation is making a deeply illogical argument. It is precisely this kind of naivety towards Russia that has brought us into this precarious situation of massive energy dependence on Russia.”
The federal government has put the commissioning of the finished Nord Stream 2 pipeline on hold. Russia currently only supplies around 20 percent of the possible quantity via Nord Stream 1. The Russian gas company Gazprom blames technical reasons for this, the federal government considers this to be a pretense.
Kubicki also advocated exploring the possibilities of fracking in Germany in order to become less dependent on natural gas supplies. “Fracking can make a significant contribution to security of supply in Germany for decades,” said the FDP politician. Fracking uses pressure and chemicals to extract gas or oil from rock layers. Critics see environmental dangers here. The method is banned in Germany, only test drilling is permitted.
