Sep 1, 2008, 18:01 GMT
Berlin - Russia will shut down its Yamal natural-gas pipeline supplying Western Europe for more than a day this week for 'routine maintenance,' a Berlin newspaper said Monday evening.
The report emerged just after the European Union froze partnership talks with Russia in protest at its military operations in Georgia.
Morgenpost Online, the website of the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper in the German capital, said Gazprom had informed customers that 30 hours of maintenance would begin on the Yamal-Europe pipeline on Tuesday, to be followed by 24 hours of flows reduced by half.
Although German gas companies said it was the first they had heard of the work, Gazprom insisted the work had been planned for the past six months in contact with pipeline companies Wingas and Europol Gaz.
The news website quoted a Gazprom spokesman saying, 'We are announcing the work now so it is not a shock and doesn't cause even more political ructions.'
Last week Berlin discounted forecasts that Russia might cut oil deliveries by pipeline to Europe as part of its response to the Georgia crisis.
The Daily Telegraph had said that the Kremlin would order a cut- off in supplies to Poland and Germany through the Druzhba pipeline. The British press said past supply halts had always been attributed to vital maintenance, but the timing had contained an obvious message.
Western Europe is heavily dependent on piped oil and gas from Russia.
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