Why Germany can’t just pull the plug on Russian energy

Last year, Russia supplied more than half of the natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germany burned to heat homes, power factories and fuel cars, buses and trucks. Roughly half of Germany’s coal imports, which are essential to its steel manufacturing, came from Russia.

Russian gas, oil and coal are embedded in the German economy and way of life. The roots run deep. The first natural gas pipeline connecting what was then West Germany to Siberia was completed in the early 1980s.

The legacy of the Cold War can still been seen in the energy infrastructure in Germany’s east, which remains directly linked to Russia, making it harder to get oil from other providers into that part of the country.