France launched today, Thursday, October 13, 2022, direct gas pumping to Germany, in a step symbolizing European solidarity in the energy sector to overcome the halt of Russian supplies in winter.

This step comes as an embodiment of a mutual assistance agreement concluded on September 5 between French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, expressing European solidarity with the increasing demand for gas and its rising prices.

After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia significantly reduced its gas supplies to Europe, knowing that several countries heavily relied on it.

Germany is one of these countries, and it needs this resource to operate its factories, which form the backbone of its economy.

As for France, its gas stock is larger than its neighbor’s because it receives large quantities of this material from Norway, as well as quantities of liquefied natural gas from the United States, which helped it fill its tanks for winter by one hundred percent.

Macron and Scholz agreed that France would pump more gas to Germany, which, in return, can, if needed, supply electricity to France after the decline of its nuclear power plants’ electric production to the lowest level.

"GRT Gaz" announced on Thursday that in this context of "the significant decline in Russian gas pumping toward Europe and within the framework of European solidarity at the level of energy security, +GRT Gaz+ acted to adapt its network and formalize a proposal aiming to enable it commercially to pump gas from France to Germany."

French gas pumping to Germany began at 06:00 with 31 gigawatt-hours per day through the Moselle regions located on the French side of the border and Middelsheim located on the German side reaching the gas network connection point.