Exports to cease on New Year’s Day as Europe faces cold snap and higher than usual fall in reserves since September

Europe will receive the last Russian gas sent via Ukraine’s pipelines in the early hours of the new year as the continent braces for a plunge in temperatures that could hasten the drain on gas reserves.

The Russian state energy company, Gazprom, is expected to cut off its exports to Europe through Ukraine’s pipelines on New Year’s Day after a gas transit deal struck between the countries five years ago comes to an end overnight.

In the absence of an 11th-hour deal, the halt will mark a historic shift after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in early 2022. Russia was once the continent’s biggest supplier of gas but it has lost almost all of its EU customers since the war began, as buyers across central Europe have turned to the US, Norway and Qatar for their supplies.

  • @TheDemonBuer
    3•6 days ago

    A combination of cold weather, short daylight hours and weak wind speeds in November – known in German as dunkelflaute – has already pushed Europe to use up more of its winter gas supplies than normal for this time of year as homes fire up their heating and power grids seek to replace wind power with electricity from gas generators.

    Nuclear power + heat pumps