OilVoice - OMV/EconGas: Currently no Delivery of Russian Natural Gas to Austria

OMV/EconGas: Currently no Delivery of Russian Natural Gas to Austria

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

– gas supply for Austria still guaranteed

Following yesterday’s reduction of natural gas supplies to Austria (deliveries had been reduced to 10%), now there are no deliveries of Russian natural gas to Austria at all.

Despite the current cancellations of Russian gas shipments, the gas supply to Austrian customers under current conditions (consumption levels, weather) can still be guaranteed due to compensating measures via storage facilities; domestic production; and imports from Western Europe - for the time being.

OMV subsidiary EconGas can rely on storage reserves for a total volume of 1.7 bcm. In order to further guarantee supply security, storage reserves have been made available in their entirety and supplied via the Austrian pipeline system. So the present cancellation of Russian natural gas can be fully compensated through the company’s storage reserves at the moment.

Today at 1pm, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, the energy regulation advisory board, will discuss various energy supply scenarios for Austria and discuss a plan, if necessary, to limit the gas consumption of big industries during peak use. Gas demand for households and trade businesses will be guaranteed under any circumstances.

OMV/EconGas will of course continue to be permanently in contact with Gazprom/Gazprom export, and the responsible authorities, and will report on further developments.

Austrian gas consumption and import volume:
Austrian gas consumption amounts to around 8 bcm per year. Approximately 51% of this volume comes from Russia, 31% from Norway and other countries and 18% from Austrian own production. With its Austrian production of 1.31 bcm per year, OMV meets 16% of the domestic gas demand.