Gazprom Has Started to Increase Gas Supplies to Europe

For the first time in a long time, the Russian gas giant has booked transportation facilities for the transit of natural gas to EU countries via Poland. For the first time in 43 days, the Russian company Gazprom booked on Tuesday, February 1, part of the capacity of the Yamal-Europe pipeline for the transit of natural gas through Poland. This is evidenced by the information published on the GSA Platform. According to the data, 12.53 million cubic meters of gas will be pumped through Yamal–Europa on February 2. The Yamal-Europe highway passes through Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany. The pipeline’s capacity is 33 billion cubic meters per year. Gazprom stopped pumping gas directly to the European Union on December 21 due to non-receipt of applications from European consumers. In December, the capacities were booked by Gazprom according to the same scheme. Also, capacities were ordered not on a regular basis, but at an additional session of daily auctions, reservations for several hours were used. Gazprom’s application for transit through Ukraine as of February 1 amounted to 107.7 million cubic meters. This is close to the maximum contracted volume of transit capacity of 109 million cubic meters. This is twice the average pumping for January of this year. Applications for pumping gas a day earlier – on January 31 – amounted to 64.6 million cubic meters. Thus, the indicator has increased almost 1.7 times. Rising gas prices in Europe A noticeable increase in gas prices in Europe began in the spring of 2021, when the average spot price on the TTF index ranged from $ 250 to $ 300 per thousand cubic meters. In the last days of summer, the cost of the contract with the delivery “a day ahead” exceeded $ 600, and in early October it became more than $ 1,000. In December, the quotes doubled, reaching a historic high of $ 2,190. There have never been such high prices in Europe in the entire history of the functioning of gas hubs, the first of which – the British NBP – was created in 1996. DW