According to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Norway currently has no way of expanding its gas supplies to Germany and Europe.

"Norway delivers at most what we can deliver," Store said on Monday in Oslo after a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

This means that after Qatar, another country's hope of quickly finding additional suppliers to replace Russian gas has been dashed.

Scholz thanked Store for Norway being a very reliable supplier.

The Norwegian Prime Minister emphasized that production had already been increased by almost ten percent after the Russian attack on Ukraine.

It is also not up to the Norwegian government to decide whether production can be safely expanded.

"We can't decide politically, we just do more." This is a decision of the companies.

For higher production, new gas deposits would have to be developed.

Scholz emphasized that they were very grateful that the Scandinavian country had maxed out production.

It is important to say that Norway wants to maintain the high production level because there will also be high demand in 2023.

Because not only this winter will be a challenge.

The reservoirs would have to be filled again in the coming year.

And that's why, in addition to the new LNG terminals for liquid gas, you need Norwegian gas, which comes via a pipeline.

That is why a reliable Norwegian delivery commitment is so important.

The EU imports around 20 percent of its gas from Norway.

In Germany, the share of Norwegian natural gas is now around 30 percent.

The country has thus overtaken Russia as the most important supplier country.

Only about 20 percent of the promised volume is currently coming from Russia via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

Economics Minister Robert Habeck had also tried - so far in vain - to obtain additional deliveries from the large gas producer Qatar.

Chancellor Scholz will travel to Canada with Habeck at the end of the week.

Here, too, the question will be whether Germany can buy LNG gas for the new terminals.