In addition, the Russian state-owned company Gazprom will stop all gas deliveries to Bulgaria from Wednesday. The gas company Bulgargas was informed about this on Tuesday, reported the Energy Ministry in Sofia.
According to information from Warsaw, the effects of the delivery stop are minor for Poland. “We are prepared for a complete cessation of Russian supplies of raw materials.” Since the first days of the Ukraine war, your country has declared that it is ready for complete independence from Russian raw materials. The Commissioner of the Polish Government for Strategic Energy Infrastructure Piotr Naimski assured that all gas customers in Poland would continue to receive the raw material at the previous level.
Bulgaria has also taken steps towards an alternative gas supply, it said. For the time being, there is no need to limit gas consumption. Energy Minister Aleksandar Nikolow wanted to comment on the delivery stop from Russia on Wednesday. Sofia has “completely fulfilled” its commitments and made all payments “timely and strictly” required by the current contract, it was announced. However, the Bulgarian online portal Mediapool reported that the April 18 gas payment for May was made in the usual way, and not through two newly opened accounts at Gazprom Bank, as requested by Gazprom – in dollars and in rubles.
Gas bills should be paid in rubles
After the introduction of Western sanctions over the Ukraine war, Russia had asked EU member states to pay their gas bills in rubles. Western states rejected the demand and insisted on compliance with the contracts with Russia, which provide for payments for Russian gas deliveries exclusively in euros or dollars.
Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Kiril Petkov had announced before the latest news from Russia that gas should no longer flow, that a Bulgarian government delegation would travel to Kyiv on Wednesday. Bulgaria has been a member of the EU since 2007, but is still almost completely dependent on natural gas supplies from Russia. A connection to the Greek gas network should be ready in June. In this way, the EU country wants to diversify its gas supply sources and also obtain the raw material from other countries. According to information from the beginning of April, a gas storage facility near Chiren in northwestern Bulgaria is said to be 20 percent full, the Bulgarian state radio reported without giving specific figures.
A Viennese gas expert told APA on Tuesday evening that less and less natural gas had been arriving in recent weeks and months via the Yamal gas pipeline, which supplies Poland with Russian gas. “The Yamal was repeatedly interrupted or set to zero because less gas was nominated,” meaning fewer customers had registered for transport. According to the expert, the Yamal is not of primary importance for Austria’s gas supply because our country is not supplied via Poland.
Meanwhile, German natural gas storage facilities are slowly filling up again. On Monday, the filling level of all German storage was 33.4 percent, as the Federal Network Agency announced in its gas supply management report. It is currently being saved relatively constantly. The filling levels are comparable to 2017 and are now significantly higher than in spring 2015, 2018 and 2021, according to the authority.
According to an overview of European storage operators, the filling level has been increasing continuously since April 5th. For comparison: On March 18, the storage tanks were 24.2 percent full, the lowest value for the winter of 2021/22. “The gas supply in Germany is stable,” the authority reported. The gas network operators had not reported any special incidents. There are no impairments to gas deliveries to Germany.
Source: Nachrichten
