Russia pumping gas to Europe via Ukraine but volumes to Austria cut

Russia, which before the Ukraine war was the biggest single supplier of natural gas to Europe, has lost almost all of its European customers

Russian gas giant Gazprom continued to pump steady volumes of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, but supplies to Austrian energy company OMV were halted hours after Vienna said Russia had given notice to cut off flows.

Russia, which before the Ukraine war was the biggest single supplier of natural gas to Europe, has lost almost all of its European customers as the EU tried to reduce its dependence and the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany was blown up in 2022, Reuters reported.

Now one of the last main Russian gas routes to Europe - the Soviet-era Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline via Ukraine - is due to shut down at the end of this year as Kyiv does not want to extend a five-year transit agreement which brings northern Siberian gas to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria.

Austria said on Friday that Moscow had informed it that the gas would be shut off from Saturday following an arbitration award to OMV, Austria's biggest energy supplier, over unfulfilled Gazprom supplies to its German unit.