BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 27.Gas exports from Azerbaijan to Europe via the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) stood at 4 billion cubic meters from January through April 2022, as compared to 2 billion cubic meters in the same period in 2021, Trend reports with reference to the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies (OIES).
“Pipeline imports in January-April were down year-on-year, and this was primarily due to lower flows from Russia. Flows from Norway and North Africa have been robust, while flows from Azerbaijan have grown from around 0.2 bcm in January-April 2019 & 2020, due to the launch of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) in January 2021. By contrast, physical flows from Russia are down 30 per cent year-on-year. Gazprom had already largely ceased selling prompt volumes on its Electronic Sales Platform (ESP) in summer 2020, and it ceased ESP sales entirely on 13 October 2021,” OIES said in its latest report.
The report reveals that although there is no publicly-available data on Gazprom’s sales via its trading subsidiaries at European hubs, it appears that Gazprom effectively withdrew from that market when it abandoned Gazprom Germania at the beginning of April 2022.
“By giving up control over its storage operator subsidiaries, Gazprom also lacks an incentive to flow additional volumes to replenish downstream storage stocks in summer 2022. Indeed, Gazprom ran them down to very low levels in summer 2021 and held very limited downstream storage stocks in winter 2021/22. Therefore, the year-on-year figures for physical Russian gas flows to Europe will almost certainly remain lower year-on-year for the rest of 2022.”
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