Russian natural gas exports through pipelines passing from Ukraine to Europe stopped in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the first day of the New Year, after the expiration of the transit agreement and the failure of Moscow and Kiev to reach an agreement to continue flows.
The flow of gas continued despite the war continuing for about 3 years, but the Russian gas company Gazprom said that it stopped supplying gas at 05:00 GMT after Ukraine refused to renew the transit agreement.
The stop, which was widely expected, will not affect prices for consumers in European Union countries, unlike what happened in 2022, when a decline in Russian supplies led to prices rising to record levels, exacerbating the cost of living crisis and harming the bloc’s competitiveness.
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The rest of the countries that are still buying Russian gas, such as Slovakia and Austria, have prepared alternative supplies, and Hungary will continue to receive Russian gas through the TurkStream pipeline, which has two branches at the bottom of the Black Sea.
Moldova’s pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria cut off heating and hot water supplies to homes on Wednesday.
The European Commission stated that the European Union was preparing to cut off supplies.
A Commission spokesman said, “Europe’s gas infrastructure is flexible enough to supply gas from non-Russian origin… It has been strengthened since 2022 with new and large capabilities to import liquefied natural gas.”
The European Union has reduced its dependence on Russian energy since the beginning of the war in Ukraine by purchasing additional quantities of gas from Norway via pipelines and purchasing liquefied natural gas from Qatar and the United States.
Ukraine said that Europe had already taken the decision to abandon Russian gas.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galoshenko said in a statement: “We stopped the transit of Russian gas. This is a historic event. Russia is losing its markets and will suffer financial losses.”
Alternative supplies
Ukraine will thus lose up to a billion dollars annually in fees paid by Russia, and to overcome this loss, the government will raise the gas transportation tariff for local consumers by four times, starting today, Wednesday, which may cost this sector more than 1.6 billion hryvnia ($38.2 million) annually. .
Gazprom will also lose about $5 billion in gas sales to Europe via Ukraine.
Gazprom stopped its supplies to the Austrian company OMG in mid-November due to a contractual dispute, but Russian gas arrived in Austria via Slovakia at a rate of approximately 200 gigawatts per day per hour.
The Austrian Energy Regulatory Authority (E-Control) said that the flow rate from Slovakia to Austria on Wednesday is expected to reach about 7 gigawatts per day per hour.
SBB, the main buyer of gas in Slovakia, said that it would supply gas to its customers via pipelines mainly from Germany and also from Hungary, but it would bear additional transportation costs.
Together, the various routes transported a record amount of 201 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe in 2018.
Most of the routes for transporting Russian gas to Europe were closed, including the Yamal-Europe pipeline via Belarus and the Nord Stream line via the Baltic Sea to Germany, which was bombed in 2022.
Russia shipped about 15 billion cubic meters of gas through Ukraine in 2023, down from 65 billion cubic meters when the last contract began in 2020 for a period of 5 years.
