Poland claims that Gazprom sends less gas than agreed in November

Russia's gas group Gazprom has reserved only about a third of the additional capacity for gas transit to Europe through Poland for the month of November. Moreover, it did not reserve additional transit capacity through the territory of Ukraine at all. The results of the auction from Monday (October 18) pointed this out. According to the Reuters agency, according to the auction platform, Gazprom has reserved approximately 32 million cubic meters (m3) per day. This represents 35 percent of the total additional capacity for November offered by the Polish gas system operator Gas System via the Kondratki transit node within the Jamal-Europe pipeline. As for Ukraine, after long and tense negotiations, Gazprom and Kiev concluded a five-year contract at the end of 2019 for the transit of Russian gas to Europe. The Russian company has the right to reserve additional transit capacity in addition to the already agreed volumes. During this year, however, it made only minimal use of this opportunity. The Ukrainian gas network operator said last week that Russia was sending less gas to Europe via Ukraine than the volume agreed in the current transit contract. According to analysts, Gazprom intentionally does not reserve larger volumes for the transit of raw materials in order to force the German authorities to issue permits for the launch of the North Stream 2 gas pipeline. The head of the Ukrainian gas network operator Serhiy Makogon confirmed that Gazprom refused to reserve additional spare capacity offered by Ukraine. "Gazprom's information about the filling of the first North Stream 2 line with gas is a clear signal that Europe will probably receive additional volumes of natural gas only through this pipeline (North Stream 2). The blackmail continues," Makogon added, referring to the information that the first of the two lines of the North Stream 2 gas pipeline were filled with technical gas. Similarly, the head of the Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz, Yuri Vitrenko, accused Gazprom of deliberately not supplying additional volumes of gas to Europe. However, both Gazprom and the Kremlin have repeatedly stated that Russia is meeting all European customer requirements in relation to gas supplies to Europe.