EU gas prices rise as Russian flows to Germany via Yamal remain low
MOSCOW/LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - European gas prices rose on Friday as low gas flows from Russia and concerns over a political row with Belarus stoked fears of tight supplies this winter.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday he could halt Russian gas flows through his country to Europe in a dispute with the European Union, but the flows remain unaffected so far.
Russian gas continued flowing via the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Germany, which also runs through Belarus, at Thursday's levels, preliminary data from German network operator Gascade showed, below volumes seen earlier in the week when Russia's Gazprom started to increase supplies to refill EU stores.
The Dutch front-month gas contract, a European benchmark, was up almost 6% on Friday morning at 79.40 euros per megawatt hour, continuing gains from Thursday after Lukashenko's comments.
"We see more scope for Russian deliveries to disappoint our forecasts than for them to exceed them, particularly over this winter," analysts at Energy Aspects said in a research note.
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 7,858,075 kilowatt hours (kWh) on Friday morning, around the same as on Thursday.
At some point on Wednesday, the hourly entry flows at the Mallnow point were as high as 15,196,614 kWh. Exit flows at Mallnow - or gas transportation into Poland from Germany - were at zero, the preliminary data showed.
Nominations for Friday daily flows of Russian gas to the west on the Ukraine-Slovakia border were at 92.1 million cubic metres, or 1 million megawatt hours, similar to levels in the previous two days that were above averages seen in the past month. (Reporting by Susanna Twidale in London and Katya Golubkova in Moscow Editing by Rashmi Aich and Mark Potter)
