Russia’s state gas company Gazprom will reduce shipments through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to 20 percent of its maximum capacity from Wednesday. That is about 33 million cubic meters of gas per day.

According to Gazprom, there are still problems importing turbines that were sent to Canada for repair. According to the company, these problems are the result of EU and UK sanctions against Russia. Gazprom cut gas supplies to about 40 percent of their maximum capacity last month. Also at that time, problems with the turbine were pointed out.

Germany does not believe that this is the real cause of the supply problems and believes that Russia is supplying less gas to the EU for political reasons.

Last week there were already major concerns that Russia would throttle gas supplies further because Nord Stream 1 was temporarily shut down for maintenance. These concerns seemed to come true when several customers were told about Gazprom You may invoke force majeure.

After Russia announced that supply would be further limited, the price of natural gas soared. On Monday, the TTF futures contract, considered a pioneer, rose to 179 euros per megawatt-hour. This is 12 percent more expensive than last Friday’s price.

The European Commission says that this scenario has already been taken into account. This was partly the reason for the proposal calling on all EU countries to save 15 percent on gas consumption in the coming period, according to a statement from the Commission. Tomorrow, the energy ministers of the member states will discuss the gas crisis.

Energy specialist Gilles van den Boeckel (The Hague Center for Strategic Studies) says Europe has no choice but to save. “We’ll have to save like Europe, there’s no Plan B. We also have to save a lot of liquid gas, but it’s already happening.”

Van den Beukel says this decision by Russia will put upward pressure on the price of gas in the long run. “Next winter and maybe next year or two or three.”

Consumers will feel this in the wallet. “The price is about ten times the normal average price for the last 10 years before it started going up. That’s a shocking amount and we’ve never seen that before.”