Bloomberg: Russian Gas Makes Germany a Supplier, Prospex Says

New pipelines that distribute Russian natural gas in Germany are lifting German trading volumes and turning Europe’s biggest energy market into a supplier of the fuel to other countries, according to Prospex Research Ltd.

Gas-trading volumes in Germany rose 20 percent to a record 2,947 terawatt-hours last year from 2,460 terawatt-hours in 2012, a report on the nation’s gas market to be published tomorrow showed. Russian gas covered 39 percent of Germany’s import needs, up from a 31 percent share in the prior year and the highest in at least three years, according to German energy lobby BDEW.

“Germany is now an important place of supply for natural gas, driving trading volumes in the market,” Nigel Harris, an analyst at Prospex and the report’s author, said by phone from London yesterday. “Rather than being at the end of the pipeline for Russian gas, it is now at the start.”
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