Russia’s gas giant Gazprom said that its European customers' natural gas requirements were being met on Saturday after a stoppage in one of its pipelines.
Gazprom has been accused by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and some European lawmakers of lacking in its efforts to raise its natural gas supplies to Europe amid tight market, but it has said it has been meeting its contractual obligations.
Supplies of Russian gas via the Yamal-Europe pipeline which passes through Belarus and Poland came to a halt. Hence, according to Germany's Gascade operator, flows at the Mallnow metering point in Germany, which lies at the Polish border, stopped early on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Gazprom said that fluctuations in demand for Russian gas were dependent on the actual needs of buyers. Poland’s gas grid operator Gaz-System said on Saturday that at that moment, there was no demand for gas transit towards Germany.
Poland's state-controlled PGNiG said that while the country was still receiving amounts consistent with its contract, flows from the east were much lower than usual.
Gaz-System added that the Yamal pipeline was delivering gas to Poland via the Kondratki compressor station on the east and Mallnow on the west through reverse mode, meaning it was shipping gas from west to east.
At the moment, Gazprom has been booking the transit capacity to Europe through Poland via the pipeline at auctions after the Russian-Polish gas transit deal expired in 2020. In the latest auction in mid-October, Gazprom scored a 32 million m3/d, or 35% of total additional capacity offered by the Polish operator Gas System for transit via the Kondratki transit point for November.
