Last week, Gazprom accused Ukraine of withholding gas supplies to Moldova and threatening to cut supplies, a charge Ukraine denies.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | Kirill Kudryavtsev AFP | Getty Images
Russian gas giant Gazprom continued stable gas deliveries to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, but supplied it to Austrian energy companies Omavi The plan was halted just hours after Vienna said Russia had given notice that it would cut off the flow of funds.
Before the war in Ukraine, Russia was Europe’s largest gas supplier, but as the EU tried to reduce its dependence and the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany was blown up in 2022, Russia lost almost all its European customers.
Now one of Russia’s last major gas routes to Europe – the Soviet-era Urengoy-Pomari-Uzhgorod pipeline through Ukraine – is set to close at the end of the year because Kiev does not want to extend the transit by five years The agreement brings gas from northern Siberia to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria.
Austria said on Friday that Moscow had informed it that it would shut off natural gas supplies from Saturday after Austria’s largest energy supplier OMV won an arbitration award over Gazprom’s unfulfilled supplies to its German unit.
On Saturday, Austrian energy regulator E-Control said supplies from Gazprom to OMV had stopped at 6 a.m. local time (0500 GMT), adding that prices for Austrian customers and Supply is stable.
OMV is seeking to essentially stop some payments for gas supplied through Ukraine by offsetting claims for invoices delivered to Austria by offsetting the €230 million in damages awarded during the Gazprom arbitration.
Gazprom said it would deliver 42.4 million cubic meters of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, the same amount as on Friday.
Data from transmission system operator Eustream showed that flows from Ukraine into Slovakia were stable, but nominations from Slovakia into Austria were around 16% lower than the average for the month.
OMV typically accounts for about 40% of Russian gas flows through Ukraine, or about 17 mcm per day.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in nearly two years on Friday, as European leaders waited to hear from Donald Trump about ending Europe’s largest war effort since World War II. The idea of ​​land war.
gas politics
According to the Kremlin, Putin told Scholz that Russia had always fulfilled its energy supply contract obligations and was “ready for mutually beneficial cooperation if the German side shows interest in it.”
Beginning with the discovery of major natural gas deposits in Siberia after World War II, Soviet and post-Soviet leaders spent half a century building an energy business linking the Soviet Union, then Russia, and Germany, Europe’s largest economy.
War and bombings have destroyed this connection and damaged the economies of both countries.
At its peak, Russia supplied 35% of Europe’s natural gas, but since the 2022 war, Gazprom has lost market share to Norway, the United States and Qatar.
The Yamal-Europe pipeline via Belarus was shut down after a dispute, while Russia blamed the United States and Britain for a mysterious explosion under the Baltic Sea that shut down the Nord Stream route.
Washington and London deny blowing up the pipeline. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian officials were behind the attack. Kyiv denies this.
Without Austria, large volumes of Russian supplies would be shipped to only two European countries – Hungary and Slovakia, with Hungary via a pipeline that runs mainly through Turkey.
Data compiled by Reuters show that in 2023, Russia transported approximately 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas through Ukraine, accounting for approximately 8% of the peak flow of Russian natural gas transported to Europe through various routes in 2018-2019.
According to the International Energy Agency, Ukrainian transit routes could meet 65% of the natural gas needs of Austria and its eastern neighbors Hungary and Slovakia by 2023.
