Evidence of meeting #31 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was siemens.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Do you use EDC financing for any of this stuff, or EDC insurance for any of your shipments overseas?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
For Siemens Energy Canada, no.
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
I really have no full knowledge of all of the energy.... We have Siemens Energy entities in over 90 countries. I'm not 100% certain if we use EDC financing in other jurisdictions.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
You have five turbines sitting there right now to be redone. Is that a rotating mechanism that you have? Would it normally be in place? Would you just be rotating one in and one out all of the time?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
To explain how this works, as I mentioned earlier, every three to four years turbines need to be overhauled. At the compression station that's connected to a pipeline, there are multiple turbines installed, and they get rotated out for maintenance. It's very common to have a rotation of turbines from the compression site to the AGT facility in Montreal for overhaul and back.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I'm kind of curious, because, growing up on the farm, a regular maintenance period on a combine, for example, would be x number of hours where you would grease it and everything else. There's always a time in harvest where you're going really hard, and you push it for another 20%, 30% or 40%.
What maintenance grace period would there be in those turbines that are sitting right now in Russia? How much more can they get out of them before they would actually have to shut them down?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
That's a good comment. It's very difficult to predict. Turbines, though, if they aren't maintained, will eventually fail. It's important to conduct scheduled maintenance. There's always a risk of unscheduled outages if maintenance is not performed.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
If one were to fail in this situation, where would they get the parts? If you're not supplying it, what would they do?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
I cannot speculate where parts would come from in this situation.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
How involved was the German government with regard to the lobbying here in Canada?
I understand you claim you weren't lobbying here, but I'm sure Siemens in Germany was actively either lobbying themselves, or talking directly, with the government in Germany, looking at its energy needs. I'm sure Germany was actively lobbying here.
How did that pull your organization into the lobbying efforts here?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
We were notified by our headquarters that the German government had reached out to Siemens Energy Global headquarters to inquire about the turbines.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
[Inaudible—Editor] the German government would have done an assessment on the [Inaudible—Editor] and realized there's a problem here. Would that have been information the Russians would have given the Germans?
They could have said, “Hey, you're going to have a huge problem getting gas,” at a meeting. “Guess what? You're not giving us the turbines, so [Inaudible—Editor]”
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
I don't know the answer.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Again, you have maintenance, and you have a grace period.
Why the “urgent” status? Why do we have to do this right now? You're going to have five sitting there. You're not doing any work on them. There's no urgent status on replacing anything going forward. Why did we feel at the time that it was so urgent to put it back into the stream, one might say?
Obviously, they didn't get there. Barring the leakages we had a few weeks ago, they were running the old turbines until x number of hours.
Why the urgency? Why not just let them go with what they had?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
It's also hard to speculate on the timing. We understood the critical piece was not having enough gas supplies during the winter in Europe. That drove timelines.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Mr. Hoback, I'm afraid you're over your five minutes. Thank you.
We next go to Mr. Zuberi, for five minutes.
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I would like to thank you for being here and fielding all of our questions.
I would like to begin with the security of the pipelines, in particular Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. From a technical perspective, I was wondering about the vulnerabilities that are there.
Can you speak to that, and how this recent sabotage impacts that assessment?
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
I cannot comment. I have nothing to add there.
Managing Director, Siemens Energy Canada Limited
We are a technology provider. We focus on aeroderivative gas turbines. We know how they are connected to the compression station, but we're not pipeline operators.
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I understand.
I appreciate your situation and position. I heard throughout your testimony that you would rather not speculate on certain matters. We appreciate that.
With respect to Gazprom's relationship with your company, has it evolved in the last six months? If so, how?