Nord Stream stops for three days

MOSCOW, 31 Aug – PRIME. Nord Stream, the main route for Russian gas supplies to Europe, is stopped for three days due to maintenance, from 04:00 Moscow time on August 31 to 04:00 Moscow time on September 3.

This is due to routine maintenance at the only working gas-pumping unit at the Portovaya compressor station Trent 60, which will be carried out by specialists from Gazprom and Siemens. The German company, in accordance with the technical documentation, needs to service the unit every 1000 hours: inspect and clean the housing, check the safety valves and adjust the air flow control system.

A three-day shutdown of the pipeline will deprive Europe of almost 100 million cubic meters of Russian gas, which corresponds to two days of filling underground storage facilities in the region. After completion of the work, in the absence of technical malfunctions of the unit, gas transportation will be restored to the level of 33 million cubic meters per day.

Futures contracts for the supply of gas in September (under TTF) after the news about the shutdown of Nord Stream jumped by almost 8%, above $2,700 per thousand cubic meters, and then – for the first time since March – crossed the threshold of $3,500, but corrected a few days later to below $3,000, about 10 times higher than last year, when prices were already record highs. Uncertainty regarding gas supplies from Russia remains one of the factors behind the growth of gas exchange prices in the region.

Nord Stream has been operating with restrictions since mid-June, and since the end of July, it has been operating at only 20% of its nearly 170 million cubic meters of capacity per day. The Russian side emphasized that the decrease in supplies was due solely to sanctions, which caused problems with the maintenance and repair of Siemens gas pumping units. Now only one turbine provides the work of the highway.