Amidst the ravaging war in Ukraine, Russian energy corporation, Gazprom supplied Kremlin consumers with a record-breaking 791 million cubic meters of natural gas on May 2. As per the report of TASS, the spokesman of the company Sergey Kupriyanov asserted that on May 2, the business provided Russian consumers with a record-breaking amount of gas and the reason behind this is the unusually low air temperature in the Russian United Gas Supply System’s operating envelope for early May.
Kupriyanov further said that because of the warm weather in February, Gazprom informed earlier that deliveries from the gas transport system to the domestic market fell by 3.7%, which is around 4.4 billion cubic meters in January-April. Gazprom’s daily output in April was 1.347 billion cubic meters, 8.5% down from the previous month. Since the beginning of 2022, it has pumped 175.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas, a 2.5% decrease from the previous year.
On the other hand, in the first four months of 2022, Russia’s gas shipments to China rose by up to 60% when compared to the same period last year, owing to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Beijing has refused to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine directly, instead, advocating for a diplomatic settlement
It is pertinent to mention here that Europe has been importing record volumes of cheap liquefied natural gas, despite the EU’s claims that it will phase out Russian gas and oil imports. On Wednesday, the Russian energy corporation announced that it was supplying natural gas to Europe via Ukraine in response to consumer requests and that the requests totalled around 98.4 million cubic metres, up from 98.96 mcm the day before.
Poland is still receiving Russian gas despite being cut off by Moscow
Just last week, Gazprom suspended gas supplies to two EU countries, Poland and Bulgaria as they refused to pay for the gas in rubles. However, despite being cut off by Moscow, Poland is still receiving Russian gas because Italy and France have stepped in to supply Poland, according to Insider. Spokesman of Gazprom Sergei Kupriyanov stated that buyers in Italy and France are ordering Russian gas and sending it on through pipes in Poland and that Russian gas is making its way to Poland via “virtual reverse flows,” which refers to the technique of grid operators reversing the direction of gas in a pipeline.
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