Klaus Muller, President of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which regulates essential services including gas supply, said on Friday it was possible that Russia could completely end gas deliveries to Germany.

Mr Müller said the agency could not rule it out, adding that this was the reason behind the agency’s decision to model various different scenarios.

Mr Müller said most scenarios were not pretty, resulting in either too little gas at the end of winter or already a difficult situation in the autumn or winter.

Russia has already sharply decreased the volume of its natural gas deliveries to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline in recent weeks.

This has left industry and political leaders nervous over the planned shutdown of Nord Stream 1 for maintenance on July 11.

The annual gas outage normally lasts several days, but this year the concern for many is whether Russia will actually turn the gas back on again once maintenance is completed.

On Thursday, the German government declared the second level “alert stage” of its gas emergency plan following significant reduction in gas deliveries from Russia.

Mr Müller urged the public to make energy savings wherever possible.

“Everyone in industry and in their home life can contribute to this, and yes, this also includes jumpers, shower heads, turning the heating down a bit, all of this helps,” he said.

Mr Müller cautioned that German consumer heating bills could double or even triple, depending on the type of building being heated.

He also advised consumers to put money aside to pay bills and talk to their landlords towards the autumn.

“There is still something that can be done now,” he added. 

(dpa/NAN)