LONDON - Germany’s ambassador to the U.K. bluntly rejected the possibility of his country resuming consumption of Russian natural gas following last year’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Let me say one thing very clearly: There will be no way back to the energy relationship we had before the war against Ukraine,” German Ambassador H.E. Miguel Berger said at the Energy Intelligence Forum 2023. “I think if something is certain then there will be no way back to the status quo.”

Graham Stuart, the U.K.’s Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, was equally emphatic during an Oct. 18 panel discussion on European energy security.

“There will be no return to that relationship following the barbaric and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” Stuart said. “The U.K. of course only had about 5% of its supply coming from Russia, which we moved to bring down to zero.”

Berger said it’s unclear how the war in Ukraine will end, with experts differing on various scenarios.

“We can be pretty sure that we will have a longer phase of uncertainty,” Berger said. “It'll depend on the future of [President Vladimir] Putin within Russia.”

Germany made a decision in the 1970s to develop an energy relationship with Russia, he said. 

“It had worked over 70 years. I think it had a stabilizing effect even during the Cold War. But with Russia's war of aggression, it is clear for German politics and public, this is a relationship that has come to an end, and we will go now in a different path,” he said.

The rest of Europe has rendered a similar verdict, he said.

“We are phasing out everywhere in Europe now oil and gas from Russia. We in Germany have done it in record time. At the end of last year, we have built in record time the LNG capacity that helped us to bring additional capacity of gas,” he said.

He dismissed Russian LNG imports to Europe, saying that volumes have not increased significantly and “our expectation would be that this will be phased out.”

Berger said the response to the invasion of Ukraine has shown the interconnectedness of Europe, particularly as LNG “went through the United Kingdom to central Europe [and] played a fundamental role in helping us to come over the last winter.”

Stuart said the shift away from Russian natural gas has been remarkable. The U.K. has become a hub for LNG and went from a net importer of 1 Bcm of gas in 2021 to a net exporter of 19 Bcm, making a significant contribution to European storage levels, he said.

“You wouldn't have been able to predict that Europe would be able to do what it's done,” Stuart said. “There are occasional critics of the planning system in both the U.K. and Germany, and to see the speed with which that LNG infrastructure was installed … did show as well, perhaps to those who are skeptical in the post-Brexit world, the level of energy cooperation across Europe.”

Dev Sanyal, CEO of European energy company VARO, said the company made a swift decision following the invasion to stop buying Russian crude or other products and to discontinue trade with Russian counterparties.

“It's a decision we took effectively in a vacuum and somewhat imperfect information,” he said. “It was the right thing to do then and the right thing to do as I look back from the period from the 24th of February of last year.”

Sanyal said European consumption of Russian gas has fallen to 10% compared to 50% before the invasion. Russian oil use dropped to 6% from 27%.

“So it's been a remarkable shift that has taken place in a very short period of time, which when you look at the preceding three decades, it was very, very static,” he said.

Sanyal said the invasion and subsequent actions by European powers illustrated the importance of infrastructure.

“Infrastructure gives you flexibility, it gives you optionality and allows for solutions in what is essentially the unexpected that occurred on the 24th of February,” he said.

Looking forward, he said Europe should think not just about energy security but also the energy transition, “which is the antidote” to relying external suppliers.

“If you can diversify the energy mix, we actually create a lot more security—sustainability of course—and as we build up the scale, that creates the affordability,” he said.

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