On Thursday afternoon, gas flows from Russia to Germany via the Yamal pipeline restarted and brought European gas prices down.
Around midday local time, westward Yamal flows continued with 1.9 million kWh starting in the pipeline’s Mallnow German entry point. In the following hour, the volume raised to 6.4 million kWh, according to data from German operator Gascade.
Several hours earlier, entry renominations jumped from 0 to 6.9 million kWh until early Friday morning but physical flows initially persisted at 0.
The returning gas supply helped calm down European gas prices. By 14.15 GMT, British and Dutch gas prices for day-ahead delivery were both down by around 5-6%. The Dutch front-month contract was down by 5% at EUR72.90/MWh (USD84.3/MWh) after trading up for most of the morning.
However, the prices were still about 13% higher than last week.
Previously, since Saturday, Russian gas has not entered Germany via the pipeline but it reversed from Germany to Poland, caused by the soaring gas prices in Europe and the accusations from several parties that Kremlin was using gas supply in pressuring Germany and the EU to approve the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
According to gas market analyst Wolfgang Peters of the GasValueChain company, the reverse flows showed that Poland has high demand amid high prices and tight supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Moving forward, traders expected that a substantial drop in prices would not happen until continued higher flows from Russia could be assured.
Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly stated that it would focus on replenishing its own domestic inventories first before launching more gas to Europe. The process is set to finish on November 8.
