Gazprom: Completes Gas Injection into UGS Facilities in Russia and Goes Over to European Storage Facilities
Gazprom is completing gas injection into underground storage facilities in Russia to ensure uninterrupted gas supply to the domestic market in the coming winter and is starting to increase supplies to UGS facilities in Europe. Such plans of the company were announced at the end of October by the chairman of the board of the company Alexey Miller after the corresponding order was given by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.
Miller said that the planned gas injection into Russian UGS facilities would be completed by November 1, but due to the announcement of additional non-working days, it was decided to continue pumping beyond the plan until November 7 inclusive.
As a result, on October 29, Gazprom announced that it had reached the planned level of the operational gas reserve in Russian storage facilities of 72.6 billion cubic meters, but continues to work on their replenishment. At the same time, the company brought the maximum daily storage capacity to 847.9 million cubic meters.
The announcement of plans to increase the injection of Russian gas into European storage facilities after the completion of work on the domestic market has significantly reduced gas prices in Europe. However, they still remain at high levels, RIA Novosti reports. So, on Friday, the cost of December gas futures according to the Dutch TTF index, the most liquid European hub, closed trading at $ 883 per thousand cubic meters.
Europe has entered the season of active gas withdrawal from its UGS facilities, being at a multi-year minimum in terms of the level of “blue fuel” reserves. And if the coming winter turns out to be severe, then there is a risk of a new jump in prices against the background of the current deficit.
At the same time, last winter, which turned out to be extremely protracted, Europe set a record for the extraction of gas from its storage facilities – 66 billion cubic meters. In Russia, 60 billion cubic meters, a record for the entire history, were also selected.
