On Wednesday, Gaz System, the operator of Polish gas transmission system confirmed that it had to stop supplying EU gas to Ukraine, due to Gazprom reduced gas supply to Poland. What is more, the corporation did not affirm whether gas supply which had been stopped at noon on September 10 would be recovered two days later as Uktransgas said.
Before that, PGING stated that the volume of gas provided by Gazprom was less than volume in contract since Monday. The day before yesterday, gas supply reduced by 20% and reduced by 24% yesterday. PGING worried about Gazprom reducing gas supply. However, Gazprom has not explained why they decrease gas supply so far.
It is reported that Gazprom is planning to limit gas supply to EU to force them to stop supply gas reversely to Ukraine. Since gas supply was cut off in midmonth of July, Ukraine sought for importing gas from EU to offset gap. The CEO of Gazprom claimed that reverse gas supply was illegal and gas corporations in EU should not provide gas coming from Russian to Ukraine.
On September 10, Uktransgas announced that Poland was forced to suspend gas supply to Ukraine for limitations of Gazprom. But Poland stated that it would find
new gas resources in its market to supply to Ukraine in two days after stopping gas supply.
It is known that Poland is the first EU member to supply gas reversely to Ukraine. But, the capacity of gas supply is less than 1.5 billion cubic meters per year, for weak technologies. From September, Ukraine can import as many as 10 billion cubic meters of gas from Slovakia annually and also can import about 4 billion cubic meters per year of gas from Hungary. The representatives of Ukrainian government claim that Ukraine can buy gas from its EU partner at a lower price, compared with buying from Gazprom directly.
