Status: 05/10/2022 8:49 p.m
Due to the war, Ukraine wants to cut gas transit through the Luhansk region to Europe. The Russian occupation makes it impossible to forward gas to distribution stations, the network operator said.
Because of the war, Ukraine wants to end the transit of Russian gas in the Luhansk region in the east of the country from Wednesday. This saved up to 32.6 million cubic meters of gas per day. According to the Ukrainian gas network operator, this is almost a third of the maximum amount that can be transported via Ukraine to Europe every day.
Due to the Russian occupation, it had become impossible to forward gas to other distribution stations via the Sochranivka point, it said. The operator referred to a case of “force majeure”.
Gazprom: diversion not possible
Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, which recently pumped almost 100 million cubic meters of gas through Ukraine to Europe every day, rejected this. Gazprom has “received no confirmation of circumstances of force majeure,” said spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov, according to the Interfax agency. It is technically not possible to divert the deliveries that are now no longer available via other routes.
The contractual maximum capacity for Ukrainian gas transit to Europe is 109 million cubic meters per day. However, the main route for Russian gas to Europe is the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 1. Two and a half months after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Moscow announced that it had penetrated to the administrative borders of Luhansk together with pro-Russian separatists.