Russia refuses to pump gas through Belarus – Charter’97 :: News from Belarus – Belarusian news – News from Belarus – Republic of Belarus
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Gazprom gave up the capacity of the Yamal-Europe pipeline.
Since January 2022, Belarus may be left without gas transit through the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline passing through the country’s territory due to Russia’s intentions to use the Nord Stream gas pipeline to supply gas to Europe, reports afn.by…
On Tuesday, the GSA Platform and the Regional Booking Platform hosted another series of pipeline capacity booking auctions.
For the first, second and third quarters of 2022, Gazprom abandoned the capacity of the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which can annually pump 33 billion cubic meters to Germany from Siberia through Belarus and Poland.
The gas pipeline, launched in 1997, has been de facto shut down since the end of last week: gas is pumped back to Poland instead of the normal direction from East to West, while Berlin, Moscow and Gazprom are silent, making traders nervous, finanz.ru writes.
The long-term contract with Poland for gas transit expired a year ago. Gazprom immediately booked capacity 12 months in advance – until September 2021. When these agreements also expired, the Russian company “took” only a third of the available volume for October and the same amount for November.
According to experts, Gazprom is probably betting that Nord Stream 2 will start working quite soon, when this happens, the Ukrainian transit route Yamal-Europe will be installed as balancing – that is, only at the moments when other pipes are already occupied.
Experts admit that Gazprom is using gas from the Yamal-Europe pipe to fill Nord Stream 2. If NS2 is not approved soon, then only then will Gazprom request additional capacity on the Belarusian-Polish route.