But only for now. Because in September 2015, following the conclusion of the Minsk Agreement, which calmed the situation, the deal was nevertheless completed. As a result, Gazprom not only acquired the storage facility in Rehden, but also the Jemgum cavern storage facility in Lower Saxony (motto: “Fast. Faster. Jemgum”) and a share in the Haidach natural gas storage facility near Salzburg.
Not that there weren’t any warning voices at the time, from Eastern Europe, but also from Germany. The Greens member of the Bundestag, Oliver Krischer, gave an interview to “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” in which he said regarding the deal: “Especially in the current crisis, this is a very big problem. One can only be amazed that we are talking regarding sanctions once morest Russia, once morest Putin, and at the same time Germany’s largest gas storage facility is being sold to Gazprom.” And Krischer said: “I don’t want to imagine if we actually have a crisis this memory is then used.”
