Europe experiences pipeline leak as continent looks to address fuel crisis

As Europe looks to navigate an ongoing fuel crisis, the continent faced another setback Wednesday, with Poland announcing a leak on the Druzhba pipeline from Russia reduced the flow of oil to Germany. Poland said the leak was probably caused by an accident, separating this leak from the Nord Stream pipeline leaks last month. Poland blamed Russia for that leak.

“We are analyzing the situation right now. I can confirm that there is indeed a leak, few dozen kilometers from Plock,” Deputy State Secretary of Poland’s Environment Ministry Adam Guibourgé-Czetwertyński said Wednesday. “All the services are on the spot including firemen and security services and we are analyzing the causes right now.”

The Polish officials’ comments on the pipeline leak came while speaking to reporters in Prague, where Europe’s energy ministers were meeting to try to agree on new measures to tackle the fuel crisis.

“We will incentivize the demand reduction, then we will insure the solidarity between member states. We will also intervene on gas prices and we will facilitate the joint purchase of gas,” European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson said. “All these four streams together they will reinforce each other and will help us to limit prices and ensure the security of supply.”

Most EU countries say they want a gas price cap to deal with the fuel crisis, but disagree on its design. Some countries, including Germany, Europe’s biggest gas market, remain opposed, arguing it risks choking off supplies. Germany and the Netherlands put forward their own proposals before Wednesday’s meeting, suggesting 10 “no-regret” EU measures, including a new benchmark price for liquefied natural gas, tougher targets to save gas, and negotiating lower prices with other suppliers.

“We need to finally step up and implement the common purchasing of gas. We need to speak to our partner countries which supply Europe with gas in order to help bringing down the excessively high prices,” German State Secretary at the Ministry for Economy and Climate Sven Giegold said. “We have to coordinate our demand reduction measures even more and in particular we understand now much better how the spot market price for gas is influencing all the contracts and we are confident that it is possible to find common ways to reduce prices but at the same time to avoid rationing and to ensure that still market forces are in place to help us limiting demand.”

Reuters contributed to this report.