Polish Stop on Yamal Pipe Flows - Update: Too High Water Content
Update: adds quote on June 22, 3.15pm GMT (5.15pm local time) from German TSO Ontras that the water content of the Russian gas was too high.
Poland’s gas grid operator Gaz-System and its main importer PGNiG said June 21 that, due to poor gas quality, they are not able to receive gas from the Yamal pipeline.
The interruption of flows comes as Polish-Russian political relations have been strained over Warsaw's opposition to Gazprom's planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.
Gascade, a German gas grid part-owned by Gazprom, however has assured NGW that the stoppage is for technical, rather than for political, reasons. The independent German transmission system operator (TSO) manages the Yamal pipe's entry point into eastern Germany from Poland at Mallnow.
Gascade, which is 50-50 owned by BASF and Gazprom, issued its first of three Remit notices to shippers about the outage at 10am June 21 noting that the stoppage was unplanned.
Polish TSO Gaz-System said June 21 “currently, the gas does not meet the quality parameters specified in the Transmission Network Code” and that it had suspended the offtake of gas at the Yamal interconnection point as of 21 June 2017, 6am.
“The reduction of the transmission capacity at the IP is scheduled to last until 23 June 2017, 6:00 am. Should this date change, Gaz-System will update the relevant urgent market messages,” said Gaz-System (meaning Remit) adding: “Ensuring correct quality parameters of gas is a responsibility of the supplier introducing the gas to the domestic transmission system.” It said balancing and safety of its system was unaffected.
Customers using virtual reverse-flow in Mallnow, where the Yamal pipe enters Germany, are also affected and have been informed, it added.
PGNiG also said that a sharp deterioration in the quality of gas delivered from Russia to Germany on June 20 had prompted Gaz-System to stop receiving gas from the Yamal pipeline.
In order to guarantee deliveries to customers, PGNiG said it has limited injecting gas to storage for winter 2017-2018 and even began withdrawing some of its own gas stocks, but it stressed that deliveries to gas consumers in Poland are not currently under threat.
It noted that supplies will also reach Poland by LNG, and that the next spot LNG cargo delivery is due July 4 at its Swinoujscie import terminal.
Germany’s leading gas importers Uniper, RWE and VNG had no related statements on their websites.
Gascade said: "Gascade has information of gas quality in the upstream system that is not within our specifications. This means gas we receive from the upstream network operators via Yamal pipeline from Poland at Mallnow, Germany. This is a technical issue. Currently there is no need to stop the natural gas flow. A flow reduction, as we published via Remit, is enough."
A spokesman for the Ontras TSO, which covers the former east Germany region, told NGW said the reason for the stoppage was that the water content in the gas was too high for German gas quality regulations.
The Yamal pipe is the main conduit for a 10.2bn m3/yr Gazprom supply contract to PGNiG, but also carries some Russian flows to Germany. But much of Germany's imports from Russia these days enter directly via the existing 55bn m3/yr capacity subsea Nord Stream pipeline, and so the roughly 33bn m3/yr capacity of the Yamal line is underused.
Polish gas consumption in 2016 was 17.3bn m3, an increase of 5.7% over 2015, according to the latest annual BP Statistical Review of World Energy published this month. It imported the contractual 10.2bn m3 from Russia. Poland's indigenous gas production was 3.9bn m3, down 3.8% year on year.
Mark Smedley