Russian gas supplies to the EU are stable, while flows via Slovakia to Czechia are higher

Russian natural gas supplies to the European Union are continuing at stable volumes today, but demand from Austria via Slovakia has risen by 21 percent compared with Monday. More gas is also flowing through Slovakia to the Czech Republic. Reuters reported this, citing data from Russian gas company Gazprom and Slovak transmission system operator Eustream.

Supplies to Austria were disrupted halfway through this month by a commercial dispute between Gazprom and Austrian energy company OMV. The Russian company said at the time that it would stop supplying gas to OMV, but Austria is still receiving gas because other gas traders requested higher supplies from the Russian company and are subsequently sending them on to Austria. Volumes for Austria, however, are still lower than they were before the middle of this month, when Gazprom removed OMV from its customer list.

Gazprom said today that it would send 42,2 million cubic metres of gas to the EU via Ukraine over the course of the day, compared with Monday’s volume of 42 million cubic metres. The volume of gas sent by Gazprom depends on so-called nominations, the technical term for suppliers’ requests to transport a specified quantity of the commodity. Nominations therefore change according to demand for Russian gas in the EU.

The increase in the volume of gas destined for Austria has so far brought supplies to the Alpine country back only to last week’s level. The volume of gas destined for the Czech Republic via Slovakia rose by eight percent today compared with Monday. Nominations for Slovakia from Ukraine remained stable for today.

Austrian company OMV suspended payments to Russian state-owned company Gazprom for gas in order to recover 230 million euros (5,8 billion Kč) awarded to it in arbitration in a dispute with the Russian company. OMV had sought compensation for irregular gas supplies and for the complete halt to supplies to Germany in August 2022. OMV is also involved in several other disputes with the Russian state-owned company.

Gas trading in the EU was disrupted by Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Until then, Europe had relied on cheap energy commodities from Russia, but after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, it began rejecting Russian energy.