EU Accelerates Preparation for Winter With Over 90Bln Cubic Meters of Gas in Storage: GIE

MOSCOW(Sputnik) - The European Union continues to prepare for winter and over 90 billion cubic meters of gas have already been pumped into its underground storage facilities, according to data from the Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) association.

The data showed that at the end of gas day on September 4, which ended at 04:00 GMT on September 5, European underground storage facilities were 81.92% full, with an average increase of 0.41 percentage points per day. In total, the EU has now accumulated about 93.3 billion cubic meters of gas and if the pumping rate maintains at the same level, as well as if there is no cold snap, European companies will manage to fill gas storage facilities by 90% by the end of September.

Meanwhile, wind power generation in Europe has grown with the advent of fall, according to the WindEurope association's data. On September 1, the generation was at the level of 9.2% and from September 2-5 it increased to the level of 13-15% of the total electricity generation in Europe.

At the same time, gas supplies from Russia remain limited. Nord Stream 1, the main pipeline supplying Europe with Russian natural gas, was operating at 20% from the end of July. Russian energy giant Gazprom attributed lower volumes to the problems with maintenance and repair of the Siemens turbines. Gazprom shut down the Nord Stream pipeline this past Friday for an indefinite period due to a malfunction of the only remaining working engine and a warning from Russian technical watchdog Rostekhnadzor.