AlwaysFree: Gazprom’s Gas Production And Supplies Results For 8.5 Months

According to the company’s website news release preliminary data on September 15, 2022, Gazprom produced 300.8 billion cubic meters of gas from January 1 through September 15, 2022. This is a decrease of 15.9 per cent (or 56.8 billion cubic meters) versus the same period of last year.

The domestic demand for the Company's supplies from the gas transmission system went down by 3.3 per cent (or 5.4 billion cubic meters) over said period of 2022.

Gas exports to the countries beyond the FSU amounted to 84.8 billion cubic meters, which is 38.8 per cent (or 53.7 billion cubic meters) lower than the figure for the same period of 2021. Gazprom delivers gas in compliance with confirmed requests.

Gas exports to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline keep growing within the framework of the long-term bilateral contract between Gazprom and CNPC. It should be noted that supplies in September regularly exceed the daily contractual volumes. On September 10, a new all-time high was hit for the daily volume of exports.

According to Gas Infrastructure Europe, gas reserves contained in Europe's underground gas storage facilities were replenished by 58.4 billion cubic meters as of September 13. Companies will have to inject another 14 billion cubic meters of gas into the UGS facilities to get them to the levels observed at the start of the 2019–2020 withdrawal period.

Nevertheless, even getting the UGS facilities of major European countries to almost maximum levels of reserves would not guarantee a reliable performance in the upcoming autumn/winter period (AWP).

For instance, Germany's gas consumption in the preceding AWP (from October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022) totaled 57 billion cubic meters, i.e. 9.5 billion cubic meters per month on average. Germany's UGS facilities are currently 89 per cent full, and their working gas inventories amount to 19.3 billion cubic meters. This means that the amounts of gas currently contained in Germany's storages are comparable to the average volume that is consumed within two (out of six) months of the AWP.

Also notable is the level of reserves observed at Ukraine's UGS facilities, which as of September 13 contained 13.6 billion cubic meters of gas out of the 19 billion required to be in stock by winter. Ukraine's representatives admit that filling up the storages is possible only in theory rather than in practice.

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