Gazprom is not pumping gas. The company's storages in Europe are getting empty - Kommersant says

Despite an increase in the physical supply of Russian gas to Europe, the level of reserves in Gazprom's gas storage facilities is not only not increasing, but even decreasing. Three of the five storage facilities - Jemgum, Haidach, and Bergermeer - are currently withdrawing gas. Gazprom explains that the net withdrawal figures are not objective, as it is not only the Russian monopoly that keeps gas in these storage facilities. In any case, the level of filling of the company's own storage facilities in Europe remains three times lower than the EU average, and this year it is physically impossible to make up for this gap. Gazprom's largest underground gas storage facilities in Europe - Rehden and Jemgum in Germany, and Haidach in Austria - have still not switched to intensive injection mode. Their reserves are critically low, and under Vladimir Putin's orders, Gazprom was supposed to increase pumping into European UGS facilities starting November 8, immediately after they were filled. The low reserves in Gazprom's UGS facilities in Europe were caused, among other things, by an accident at Gazprom's gas condensate treatment plant in Novy Urengoy in August. Because the Russian monopoly lost some of its production capacity, the volume of gas pumped through Poland via the Yamal-Europe pipeline was also reduced (minus 35-50 million cubic meters per day). To fulfill its contracts, the company had to draw more gas from its underground gas storage facilities during the peak pumping season. This week, "Gazprom" increased physical delivery of gas through Ukraine and Poland from the extremely low values of early November. Thus, on November 11, Gazprom increased gas through Ukraine to its full contractual obligations of 109 million cubic meters per day, which has not been observed for a long time. The Yamal-Europe pipeline load increased to about 17 million cubic meters per day, which is five times less than the throughput capacity. Gazprom is not ordering additional capacity on these routes. Since the physical supply of gas to Europe has increased, while Gazprom's UGS reserves have not, apparently, increased gas withdrawals under contracts by the company's customers. In any case, filling Gazprom's storage facilities to at least 80 percent, comparable to the EU average, this year already looks almost impossible. Fitch's Dmitriy Marinchenko estimates that about 5 billion cubic meters of gas need to be pumped. At the same time, the combined maximum design pumping capacity of Rehden, Jemgum, Haidach and Bergermeer is about 80 million cubic meters per day. And in order to pump such volume of gas, Gazprom will at least have to use the Yamal-Europe pipeline capacity as much as possible in all the remaining days of the year, and the company has already booked it at the minimum level until the end of November. The low level of reserves in UGS facilities creates risks for Gazprom: it will be difficult for the company to cover daily consumption peaks in its contracts as it is physically impossible to supply gas through the pipelines so quickly.