Business activity in Europe is slowing down due to the holidays, so requests for gas deliveries from Russia are also decreasing.
Article continues below
"Gazprom is delivering Russia gas for transit through Ukrainian territory normally, in line with orders from European customers - 56.9 million cubic meters for April 18," the Russian gas giant's spokesperson Sergei Kupriyanov told reporters.
According to data from the Gas Transmission System (GTS) Operator of Ukraine, nomination for April 18 is 56.9 million cubic meters, and bookings for April 17 totaled 56.5 million cubic meters.
The situation with wind power generation continued to deteriorate in Europe, which is seeing a spell of clear and calm weather. Whereas wind power contributed around 25% of electricity generation across the European Union last week, these figures averaged only 13% between April 17 and 11, data from WindEurope show.
Rising temperatures and declining gas consumption allow importers to return to the flexible optimization of consumption volumes depending on the cost. Gas imported under a month-ahead contract - Gazprom has about half of its exports pegged to this - in April is around $1,400 per thousand cubic meters.
A day-ahead contract on the spot market is currently $1,001 per thousand cubic meters. Therefore, buyers are increasing their purchases on the spot market, and reducing off-take on record-breaking long-term contracts. This specifically explains the rise in reverse deliveries from Germany to Poland via the Yamal-Europe pipeline.
The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline has been continuously operating in reverse on the section between Germany and Poland since April 7.
The reverse flow from Germany to Poland stands at 0.5 mcm per hour this weekend, data from gas transport operator Gascade show. Offtake of additional gas from the main European hub to replace direct imports from the East is another factor contributing to high gas prices in the EU.
Europe has opened the injection seasons into underground storage facilities. The current stock is 28.53%, an increase of 0.33 percentage points over the last 24 hours.
The current level of reserves in underground gas storages in Europe lags behind the five-year average by 7 percentage points. In April, injection will be restrained by high prices for imported gas.
As per the decree of the Russian president, the government as of April has introduced a new procedure for paying for Russian gas supplies that stipulates the obligatory conversion of the contract currency into rubles through Gazprombank. ■