Gazprom’s announcement of parting with its German subsidiary Germania was still a guessing game among gas experts on Monday.
The separation of Russian state-owned Gazprom from its German subsidiary Gazprom Germania with its gas storage facilities in Germany and Austria is not expected to have any negative impact on Austrian gas supplies. Reason: The quantities from the Haidach gas storage facility in Salzburg are only intended for the German market and not the Austrian market. “Haidach is a large German storage facility,” says the gas industry.
Under the contract, natural gas from the Haidach storage facility to German customers has already been 100% marketed by the German branches of Gazprom GSA and Astora. With 2.9 billion cubic meters of natural gas, Haidach is the second largest storage facility in Central Europe. The technical operator is the Austrian RAG, which also planned and built the storage facility. Haidach is attractive because of its particularly high capacity: injection capacity is 1.1 million cubic meters per hour, equivalent to 11.9 gigawatts (GW), withdrawal capacity is 1.2 million cubic meters per hour. hour or 13.1 GW. The above ground facilities in Haidach belong to a third of the Austrian RAG, the Russian export of Gazprom and the German subsidiary of Gazprom Wingas, the underground parts of the Republic of Austria.
expert puzzle
With a technically operated storage capacity of over 6 billion cubic meters – a good 70% of annual domestic consumption – RAG itself is the fourth largest storage operator in Europe. However, RAG has converted about half of the natural gas deposits found in the company’s 80-year history into storage facilities. In addition to Gazprom, there is also cooperation with Uniper. National oil, gas and chemicals group OMV’s largest gas storage facility is Schönkirchen in Lower Austria with 20.7 TWh including Tallesbrunn is over 25 TWh (over 2.2 billion cubic meters) .
Gazprom’s announcement of parting with its German subsidiary Germania was still a guessing game among gas experts on Monday. RAG said there was no official statement from Gazprom yet, so it was not possible to comment on that. Experts assume the contracts are still in effect. The Energy Ministry in Vienna said on Friday afternoon that the announcement about Gazprom Germania was only known to the media and that the development was being examined jointly with E-Control and market area manager Austrian Gas Grid Management. (AGGM).
In its Monday morning daily management report, AGGM explained: “Gas flows towards all areas of the Austrian market, including imports via Ukraine, are currently running without interruption.”
According to AGSI (Aggregate Gas Storage Inventory) data, domestic storage facilities were 13.14 percent full as of Saturday – the figure was 12.55 terawatt hours (TWh) out of a total of 95.5 TWh of work capacity.
For comparison: Austria’s natural gas consumption last year was 96.3 TWh – the equivalent of around 8.5 billion cubic meters.
The reason for the very low warehousing activity last year was a pricing structure that made building inventories unprofitable. Above all, it lacked an attractive difference between summer and winter prices.
The announcement of the sale of Gazprom Germania was made on Friday, after speculation about a possible expropriation in Germany emerged in the previous days and there were also searches by the EU competition watchdog. Gas market expert Fabian Huneke of consultancy Energy Brainpool said on Friday: “The physical assets (gas storage, pipelines) that will be lost from the Russian perspective with the sale of Gazprom Germania could be the pawn sacrifice for renegotiate the gas supply contracts.” Because Gazprom Germania holds most of the import contracts through its subsidiaries Wingas and WIEH. Existing contracts still bind Gazprom Export to currency, price and volume. “This contractual obligation can now be lifted, for example, through the insolvency vehicle of Gazprom Germania and its subsidiaries involved in the gas trade,” Huneke said.
(APA)