RIYADH Jul 21:Russia resumed pumping gas through its biggest pipeline to Germany on Thursday after a 10-day outage, the operator said, easing Europe’s supply concerns amid an economic tit-for-tat with the Kremlin over its invasion of Ukraine. On the Nord Stream AG website, physical flows were at 21,388,236 kilowatt-hours per hour for 0400 to 0500 GMT, from zero previously. Europe has been on edge about the restart after the annual maintenance of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which accounts for more than a third of Russian gas exports to the EU.
“We are in the process of resuming gas transportation. It can take a few hours to reach the nominated transport volumes,” a spokesperson for the operator told Reuters. Nord Stream 1 transports 55 billion cubic meters a year of gas under the Baltic Sea and has been offline since July 11. A spokesperson for Austria’s OMV said Gazprom signaled it would deliver around 50 percent of agreed gas volumes on Thursday, levels seen before the shutdown.
On June 14, Russia reduced gas flows to 40 percent of capacity through the pipeline, citing the delay of a turbine being serviced in Canada. Following the opening of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, the euro rebounded back toward a two-week high to the dollar.
