Russian gas flows via Yamal-Europe pipeline head westbound
MOSCOW, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Gas in the Yamal-Europe pipeline flowed from Russia towards Germany on Wednesday, heading in the usual westbound direction, preliminary data on German transmission company Gascade's website showed.
Flows had run in reverse last week, with gas heading eastwards back towards Russia, threatening to exacerbate a tight western European gas market that has driven up energy prices for industry and consumers to record levels in recent weeks.
Flows into Germany at the Mallnow metering point, which lies on the Polish border, resumed late on Monday and stood at an hourly volume of around 12,356,080 kilowatt hours (kWh) on Wednesday morning.
Exit flows at Mallnow - or requests to transport gas into Poland from Germany - were at zero, the preliminary data showed.
On Tuesday, Russia's Gazprom said it started to refill its European gas storage - a factor which eased spot prices in the region.
Internet data displayed by Gazprom-owned German storage company Astora, which operates two storage facilities in Germany and one in Austria, showed German Rehden has been steadily receiving 406,875 kWh per hour of gas from early Tuesday.
At the other two, German Jemgum and Austrian Haidach, there were no receipts on Wednesday morning but volumes were being withdrawn at rates of 1,115,086 kWh/h and 3,772,347 kWh/ respectively.
All three facilities have been showing varying feed-in and withdrawal activities in November to date, with Jemgum and Haidach sporadically accepting relatively large volumes last weekend, Astora's data showed.
Overall European gas storage levels stood at 75.6% of capacity on Monday compared with 93.9% a year earlier, data from infrastructure group GIE showed.
German levels, which account for a quarter of European Union storage capacity, stood at 69.9% compared with 93.3% a year ago.
"An increase in Russian gas exports to the EU would be a welcome relief," said consultant Eurasia in a note. "However, EU transmission data so far suggests this has yet to happen."
(Reporting by Katya Golubkova and Vera Eckert; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Edmund Blair)
