Russia resumes gas supply to Europe.
Russian gas has started flowing again through the largest pipeline between Russia and Germany after a 10-day outage, the operator announced, allaying concerns that maintenance on the plant would be extended.
Europe has nervously awaited the restart of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline after annual maintenance, with governments bracing for further supply cuts amid an economic standoff with the Kremlin over the war in Ukraine.
A 10-day maintenance outage reduced flows to zero on July 11 and there were fears Moscow could decide not to resume supplies at a time when Europe is already facing an energy crisis.
A spokesman for Nord Stream AG told that it will take some time to reach normal gas transport levels.
He said the latest gas supply volumes are the same as those announced before the maintenance period – about 67 million cubic meters per day – and correspond to about 40 percent of the maximum supply capacity.
The pipeline carries 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year under the Baltic Sea and has been out of service since July 11 for annual maintenance.
On the website of the operator Nord Stream AG, it is stated that the physical flow was 21,388,236 kwh/h in the period from 6 to 7 hours, compared to the zero flow before that.
It takes several hours for the flow to stabilize, a spokesman of the operator told.