Britain plans to cut mainland Europe off from its supply of British gas should severe supply shortages emerge due to ongoing hostilities with Russia.
The United Kingdom is to shut down its pipelines feeding gas to mainland Europe in the event of severe supply shortages, a report has claimed.
Part of the country’s emergency plans to deal with a gas crisis, mandarins in charge of Britain’s national grid are also reportedly planning to cut off large industrial users at home should supplies become tight.
According to a report by the Financial Times, gas interconnectors linking British gas to Belgium and the Netherlands are due to be shut down should a gas crisis occur in the UK, though no mention is made regarding the supply of gas to the Irish republic.
It would be reportedly one of the first emergency measures to be implemented to ensure British homes and businesses remain supplied, likely much to the chagrin of the UK’s European neighbours.
However, one European gas tsar has claimed that such a move would cause problems Britain too, which sometimes imports gas through those same pipelines from Europe during the winter.
“I would definitely recommend they [the UK] reconsider stopping the interconnection [in the event of a crisis],” the Financial Times reports President Bart Jan Hoevers of European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas as saying, who argued that the connectors were “also beneficial for the UK in the winter”.
A likely UK decision to stop supplying mainland Europe with gas should things get tight is yet another problem for officials on the continent to worry about as Moscow continues to either partially or completely cut off European states from their supply of Russian gas.
In particular danger regarding the supply of energy is Germany, whose addiction to Russian energy exports — partially a result of the country’s climate change obsession — has resulted in the country facing serious energy security.
As a result, the country has already engaged two of its three emergency phases, with the country entering a “gas crisis” after the Kremlin drastically reduced the country’s supply of gas.
The country is now only one step away from rationing the hydrocarbon, a process that the state’s economic and climate minister says would likely result in a financial collapse.
“Companies would have to stop production, lay off their workers, supply chains would collapse, people would go into debt to pay their heating bills, that people would become poorer,” Green party minister Robert Habeck previously said regarding the consequences of rationing.
The country will now resort to burning more high-emission coal in order to make up its energy shortfall, though has now repeatedly stated that it will still not delay the decommissioning of its three remaining nuclear power plants, despite calls from Europe to do so.