In the first ten days of February, Germany, against the backdrop of cold weather, increased the purchase of Russian gas by one and a half times (by 47.8 percent), according to the official Telegram channel of Gazprom.
According to Gas Infrastructure Europe, the level of occupancy of underground storage facilities in Germany has reached 37 percent. Gazprom reminded that Germany is the company’s largest foreign client.
Earlier, the company revised its forecast for the average gas price for the year. Against the background of record sales in January, the level was raised from $ 170 per thousand cubic meters to $ 200.
At the same time, the company expects that in the next months, when the cold weather ends, the deliveries will still be above average. Europe will have to fill underground storage facilities, the raw materials from which are currently being actively consumed.
Last year, due to the expansion to the European market of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and abnormally warm weather, supplies from Russia through pipelines decreased by 10 percent, to 179.3 billion cubic meters.
This winter, in addition to the cold weather itself, the rise in prices in the Asian markets played in favor of Gazprom, due to which all free volumes of LNG were sent there. In the near future this problem will be resolved, which will allow manufacturers to return to Europe and compete with Russia.
Earlier it was reported that the Fortuna barge stopped laying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline due to bad weather. Construction is expected to resume next week.