[vaduz]

Total capacity of the completed Nord Stream 1 (~55 bcma, billion cubic metres per year) and Yamal-Europe (~33 bcma) is barely sufficient to cover the German demand (~88.7 bcma in 2019), assuming no sales to Poland or Austria and other countries on the route of the latter - but one of the swan songs for Germany was the prospect of being the transit country for the remainder of the capacity that Nord Stream 2 was to bring (another 55 bcma!). It would also allow Germany and Russia to exert more political pressure on some of its neighbours, in particular on other central European countries (Poland, Slovakia, Austria) - it is not unreasonable these countries not exactly thrilled about the prospect. Not to mention, it helps in those times when Germany needs to give the finger to the US, of course.

Plus there is the little thing that most existing terminals can't accept Q-class ships (i.e. vessels with capacity 200 thousand cubic metres), so it is not exactly possible to replace total demand with LNG - it's actually doubtful if you could even replace the ~9 bcma of Nord Stream 2 gas that was actually earmarked for Germany. We are talking different orders of magnitude here.