Russia to rescue as Europe draws more natural gas in Siberian chill

Bloomberg

Russia is sending more natural gas to Europe than ever before as a blast of Arctic air lifted demand for heat and electricity, underlining the region’s dependence on its eastern neighbour.
The freeze severely tested Europe’s energy network over the past week. Spot gas prices tripled to a record, drawing in more Russian supplies by pipeline and prompting a tanker of the fuel in its liquid form to schedule
arrival in the UK next week.
With a dissipating capacity to store gas and few tankers of liquefied natural gas arriving this season, Europe and particularly the UK is increasingly reliant on Russia to feed its energy needs. Moscow-based Gazprom PJSC, the continent’s dominant supplier for decades, used the opportunity to crow about its essential role.
“Only Gazprom is capable of increasing gas supplies to European customers to maximum levels at a breakneck speed,” Alexey Miller, the chief executive officer of Gazprom, said in a response to questions. “There’s no other supplier that could cope with the task.”
Daily shipments from Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom skyrocketed to a record in February, according to the company’s data. Europe’s consumption jumped to highest level in at least five years during the week through February 24, and this week’s cold snap drove demand higher still, according to estimates from London-based Marex Spectron Group Ltd. It will be the first seaborne gas delivery to the UK since February 22, which was the only cargo that month.
Tanker-tracking data from Kpler SAS indicate the Maran Gas Ulysses will deliver LNG to the Dragon terminal in Wales on March 6. The cargo from the Yamal LNG plant in Siberia will be transferred from the project’s ice-class tanker onto the cheaper conventional one at France’s Montoir terminal.
“We see the coldest end of the winter in years, and Russia is the first supplier with enough spare capacity to meet an extreme surge in demand,” said Giacomo Masato, a meteorologist at Marex Spectron.
No other country has the capacity to match Russia’s supply. In Norway, some of its facilities including the Kollsnes gas plant were curtailed by outages during the peak of the crisis. Consumers dipped into gas storage tanks in Germany at record rates to satisfy a surge in demand, according to research from Blo-omberg New Energy Finance. Much of that gas originates in Russia, and Germany bo-osted imports from the east during the crisis.