Deliveries of Russian gas to Europe will ultimately not resume this Saturday as planned. The Nord Stream gas pipeline will indeed remain shut down due to a leak. A new twist. This Friday evening, Gazprom announced that it had discovered “oil leaks” in the turbine of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, thus preventing the return to service which was scheduled for Saturday. “Until the repair, the transport of gas via Nord Stream is completely suspended,” said the group, without giving any indication of the duration of the repairs. A blow for the European Union as gas deliveries from Russia to Europe via the pipeline were to resume this Saturday, September 3, after a three-day maintenance. Nord Stream was to restart at 20% of its normal capacity, the same level as before the maintenance. Energy, a weapon of war? In a context of war in Ukraine, energy is at the heart of a showdown between Moscow and the West. They regularly accuse Russia of using gas as a weapon. On Wednesday August 31, the Russian energy company Gazprom had justified the suspension of flows by the need for maintenance work on a pipe compressor station located in Russia. A German official had deemed the interruption “technically incomprehensible”. In recent months, Gazprom has significantly reduced the quantities of gas delivered by Nord Stream. The company had already carried out ten days of work on the gas pipeline in July, which was then restarted with a further drop in deliveries. Before the invasion of Ukraine, Nord Stream transported around a third of the 153 billion m3 of gas purchased annually by the European Union. to make up for the missing quantities, the Member States endeavor to find other suppliers or to reduce their consumption. In France, it has already dropped by 4 to 5%, according to Engie. This Friday, following a dedicated Defense Council meeting, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Energy Transition, held a press conference on the energy crisis that is likely to occur this winter and indicated that stocks gas were filled “92%”.