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Gazprom supplies around a third of the natural gas consumed in Europe
Photo: Evgenia Novozhenina / REUTERS
Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom expanded its deliveries to Germany a little on Tuesday morning.
In Mallnow in Brandenburg on the border with Poland, where the great Yamal pipeline from Siberia arrives, around six million cubic meters of natural gas arrived from the east.
This is shown by data from the network operator Gascade.
Previously, no gas flows at all had been registered here for days.
Gas deliveries through the Transgas pipeline, which runs through Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to Germany, increased by around ten million cubic meters.
For comparison: the Federal Republic of Germany consumes around 300 million cubic meters of natural gas on an average day in November, and Western Europe a total of more than 1.4 billion cubic meters.
With the slightly increased delivery volumes, Gazprom is apparently implementing the announcement by Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
At the end of October, he had promised to send more gas to the West from this week on - but he did not say how much more.
On the short message service Twitter, Gazprom announced that it is now filling up its own gas storage facilities in Europe.
In total, there are five underground storage facilities.
The group did not specify which ones it should be.
"That is a step - but a small one"
Critics have been accusing the Kremlin and its state-owned company for months of deliberately withholding deliveries in order to stir up fears of a bottleneck in the west in order to force the controversial second Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 2 to go into operation quickly.
The additional amounts that have now flowed are not nearly enough to secure the winter.
»Instead of the previous 256 million a day, Gazprom now delivers around 272 million cubic meters through the three largest pipelines to Germany.
That's a step - but a small one, "said Tom Marzec-Manser, chief gas strategist at the London analysis company ISIC, to SPIEGEL.
In addition, it is completely unclear whether Gazprom will maintain this amount, increase it - or reduce it again in the coming days.
"We should now see at least a week of constant flows at this level or higher," said Marzec-Manser.
Then at the earliest, confidence will regain confidence in the European wholesale markets.
Market participants initially reacted cautiously to the manageable additional gas deliveries from Russia.
On the Dutch reference market TTF, the price for natural gas for delivery by 10.15 a.m. fell by around three percent - and was still many times higher than usual at this time of the year.
Driven by concerns about a possible gas shortage in winter 2021/22, European wholesale prices soared this autumn.
In some cases, the fuel cost more than 20 times as much as in early summer 2020.
This will be expensive for German gas consumers.
According to the comparison portal Check24, at least 127 basic providers have already increased their tariffs or announced this: an average of 18.4 percent.
For a model household with an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours, this means average additional costs of 275 euros per annum.