The repeated stop of Russian gas deliveries through the important Nord Stream 1 pipeline is driving up the gas price enormously.
The European future rose by a good 30 percent on Monday to 272 euros per megawatt hour and was heading back towards the most recent record high.
This once again sent the shares of the gas supplier Uniper, which had already gotten into difficulties due to a lack of Russian deliveries, down.
The price fell by a good 10 percent.
Since the company had to stock up on natural gas from other sources in the short term, the losses at the current prices added up to 100 million euros per day, the analysts at Credit Suisse calculated.
The German stock market as a whole also started the week much weaker: the Dax lost almost 3 percent in the morning to less than 12,700 points.
The papers of the power companies RWE and E.ON lost up to 5.1 percent.
They suffered, among other things, from the planned skimming off of random profits from energy companies.
The idea is not new, but is now becoming concrete, said a stockbroker.
Germany gets practically no more gas from Russia.
Gazprom is suspending all deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline until further notice, allegedly due to technical problems.
The Kremlin blames the sanctions policy for the gas supply stop.
However, it is assumed that Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin wants to put even more pressure on the West and especially Germany in the conflict over Ukraine.
"Fear of a Lehman-like crisis in the European energy sector is growing," wrote Jochen Stanzl, chief market analyst at trading house CMC Markets.
A quick solution to the energy crisis is not in sight, warned Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at brokerage firm AvaTrade.
Therefore, Europe is threatened with an economic disaster.
The Russian energy company Gazprom announced on Friday evening that it would not supply any gas to Germany and other European countries via the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline until further notice.