Gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline have been announced for Saturday morning after a three-day supply freeze ended. This emerges from preliminary data on the Nord Stream AG website. Accordingly, gas deliveries are scheduled again from 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. However, the Kremlin in Moscow did not rule out further delivery interruptions.
The volume of the announced deliveries initially corresponded to the level before the interruption, i.e. around 20 percent of the maximum possible volume and thus 33 million cubic meters of natural gas daily. In the late Friday afternoon, the preliminary data then showed only a hardly significant amount.
However, these reservations – so-called nominations – can change until shortly before the actual delivery and differ from the quantity actually delivered. This is preliminary information for gas network operators so that they can transport significant quantities.
The data published on the Nord Stream AG website on Friday only showed the time up to 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, since that is when a new gas day begins.
Since Wednesday morning, no gas has flowed through the last most important pipeline for Russian gas to Germany. According to the Russian energy company Gazprom, the reason is maintenance work on a compressor station. The company had announced that the delivery stop would last until September 2nd.
The head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, had expressed doubts about the reasoning. Gazprom also referred to technical reasons in connection with the throttling to a fifth of the maximum output. The federal government, among others, had doubts about this.
The Russian energy giant Gazprom is not to blame for the fact that the reliability of the line through the Baltic Sea is at risk, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the Interfax agency. There are no technical reserves. “Only one turbine is running,” he said when asked by a journalist about possible further interruptions.
According to the state-owned company, the last remaining turbine in the compressor station has to be serviced every 1000 working hours. The next stop should therefore be in mid-October.
Meanwhile, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants the EU to pay less for Russian gas given the dramatic rise in energy prices. “I firmly believe that now is the time for a price cap on Russian pipeline gas to Europe.”
Gas wholesale prices continued to fall on Friday. In the afternoon, the price of the futures contract TTF for Dutch natural gas was 221 euros per megawatt hour. The day before it was still 243 euros. The contract is seen as a benchmark for gas prices in Europe. Friday last week its price was 347 euros.
