German utility company RWE yesterday signed a deal with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe’s largest economy by the end of December, RWE announced.

According to the agreement, the December cargo “will be the first LNG to be supplied to the German gas market via the floating LNG import terminal at Brunsbuttel.”

It added: “The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on multi-year LNG supplies where cargoes will be delivered to Germany starting from 2023.”

The agreement was signed on the second day of a two-day visit by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the UAE.

“We need to make sure that the production of LNG in the world is advanced to the point where the high demand that exists can be met without having to resort to the production capacity that exists in Russia,” Scholz said before the deal was announced, according to Reuters.

“The fact that we are linked to one supplier and his decisions, will certainly not be repeated with us again,” he added, referring to Russia, which supplies European countries with most of their needs for oil and gas.

“We will do this in a logical way, which is to focus on regions that allow us to guarantee energy supplies,” Scholz said, adding that “thanks to investments in Germany, which will become reality little by little next year, we will have an infrastructure to import gas to Germany so that we will not be linked directly to a specific resource through a pipeline.

Scholz is racing against time to find new suppliers to make up for Russian gas shipments which are expected to run out soon, as Europe prepares for a difficult winter amid tight supplies.

“We have made progress on a whole series of projects here related to the production and procurement of diesel and gas, and we have LNG projects,” Scholz said in Abu Dhabi.

Scholz travelled to Qatar after his meetings in Abu Dhabi. On Saturday, he held talks in Jeddah with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology,Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, said the deal was ADNOC’s “first LNG agreement with a German customer”.