When Vladimir Putin switched off the gas taps to Europe, Germany more than most feared a winter of blackouts. Ministers scrambled to secure alternative supplies, painfully aware that a heavy dependence on Russian gas had left this industrial nation woefully exposed.

But fast forward a few months and, as lights sparkle in the Christmas markets, there is a sense of tentative optimism in the Glühwein spiced air. Germany’s hastily assembled strategy to manage without Russian gas appears – for now – to be working.

“Energy security for this winter is guaranteed,” the Chancellor Olaf Scholz told MPs in the German parliament on Wednesday morning.

Not only are the country’s gas stores full; the result, in part, of a frantic – and expensive – buying operation on the world’s markets.

But, up on Germany’s windswept North Sea coast, engineers have just finished building – in record time – the country’s very first import terminal for liquified natural gas (LNG).

LNG is natural gas which is cooled to liquid form to reduce its volume and make easier to transport. It’s then converted back to gas form upon reaching its destination.

Germany is rightly notorious for its ponderous bureaucracy; this kind of project would normally take years, but the authorities slashed away at red tape to enable completion in under 200 days.