Supplies are being delivered through alternate routes, the company says
© Sputnik / Ilya Pytalev
Russian gas deliveries to the EU remain unchanged despite an explosion at a pipeline in central Russia, the local unit of state energy provider Gazprom said in a statement late Tuesday.
According to the company, the flows have been redirected to alternate routes.
“The damaged section of the gas pipeline was promptly localized. Gas transportation to consumers is provided in full through parallel gas pipelines.”
The blast occurred at a section of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline in the Chuvash Republic several hundred kilometers east of Moscow on Tuesday, causing a major fire. The blaze has been extinguished and the incident is currently being investigated. The local administration said earlier that the blast occurred during scheduled maintenance.
The 4,500km pipeline transports natural gas from Western Siberian gas fields to the EU via Ukraine. It is one of the two remaining conduits supplying the region with Russian gas following the September explosion on the Nord Stream pipeline, which rendered it inoperable.
The other route is the TurkStream pipeline, which supplies gas to southern Europe via Türkiye.
Tuesday’s incident prompted gas prices in the EU to briefly spike. Europe’s benchmark, Dutch TTF gas futures, exceeded $1,250 per thousand cubic meters during trading on Tuesday, according to data from the ICE exchange. Prices retreated following Gazprom’s announcement, however, and were trading around $1,090 early Wednesday, their lowest since mid-November.
Ukraine’s grid operator confirmed late Tuesday that gas flows from Russia remained normal throughout the day, with no pressure changes detected at the Sudzha gas entry point at the border, and nominations for Wednesday remain unchanged.
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