Greece has spoiled the statistics of the Turkish Stream

May will be the first month of this year when deliveries via the Turkish Stream will be lower than last year. This is happening even though Gazprom supplies additional volumes to Slovakia via the Black Sea gas pipeline due to the suspension of Ukrainian transit. The decrease is due to a reduction in supplies to Greece. The weather in the country is so comfortable that the demand for gas has seriously decreased, as supplies via the Southern Gas Corridor from Azerbaijan have also decreased, and LNG terminals are generally idle in May.

According to the platform of the GTS operators of the EU ENTSOG countries, in May, an average of 44.8 million cubic meters per day are supplied via the European line of the Turkish Stream, and monthly volumes will amount to 1.39 billion cubic meters. This is 40 million cubic meters less than the figures of the last month of spring last year.

This May will be the first month of the year when Gazprom's supplies will be lower than last year's. A slight decrease occurred despite the fact that Ukrainian transit stopped on January 1 and some of the dropped volumes are supplied via the Turkish Stream. The new import route was announced in Slovakia.

Lower supplies are associated with a reduction in exports to Greece. Compared to last May, deliveries will drop by 70 million cubic meters and drop to 228 million cubic meters.

Alexey Grivach, Deputy Director of the National Energy Security Fund (NWF), notes that the decline in Russian gas supplies is within the margin of error and is due to the comfortable weather that has set in the south of Europe.

"There are no gas storage facilities there," the expert says.

Since Greek companies do not need to create stocks, they buy for current demand, which has sharply decreased. This is confirmed by data from other suppliers.

Thus, in May, Greek companies also reduced imports via the Southern Gas Corridor from Azerbaijan to 87 million cubic meters. But LNG supplies, according to GIE, have stopped altogether. In the last month of spring from liquefied gas terminals in Greece has not had a single return to the country's gas transmission network.

After Ukraine stopped the transit of Russian gas, the European line of the Turkish Stream became the only export route for Gazprom to Europe. And despite the drawdown in May, it will show higher figures for the first five months than a year ago. Total deliveries will grow by more than 500 million cubic meters — up to 7.08 billion cubic meters. Despite the fact that the gas pipeline has been operating at over-design capacity for several years.