To this end, Gazprom announced that it will temporarily supply natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria from Wednesday afternoon (Beijing time 14) until they pay according to the procedures stipulated by law. After Russia announced the suspension of gas supply to Poland and Bulgaria, the price of natural gas in Europe rose sharply. Since the 26th, natural gas in Europe has been rising continuously. Up to now, the European benchmark TTF Dutch natural gas futures price has reached more than 65,438+000 euros per MWh. Although this price has dropped from the previous two days, it does not rule out the possibility of further increase in European natural gas prices.
In fact, this is not the first time that natural gas in Europe has risen. Since 20021,the demand for natural gas in Europe has further increased due to extremely cold weather, which has led to a sharp rise in natural gas prices. At the peak, the price of natural gas in Europe once rose to $3,500/thousand cubic meters. Although the weather in Europe has warmed recently, the demand for natural gas has declined, and the corresponding natural gas price has also dropped sharply. However, compared with the low level of previous years, the overall natural gas price in Europe is still high, and the natural gas cost of many European residents is still much higher than that of previous years.
In the context of rising natural gas prices, some European countries also allow residents to go up the mountain to cut wood for cooking or heating. For example, some time ago, people in Germany, Poland and other countries began to buy a lot of wood, and even some residents went up the mountain to cut wood in some legal firewood cutting areas to cope with the possible rise in natural gas prices in the future.
This phenomenon was rare in Europe before. At present, most countries in Europe use clean energy, mainly natural gas. Except for heating, in fact, most countries do not use firewood for cooking. Only in the context of rising natural gas prices, many people can only return to their original state.
In fact, this kind of chopping wood for cooking and heating is quite fun. As some European residents said, you can keep warm when cooking, and you can bake a potato or something, so don't say how comfortable life is. But this kind of fun may make some people feel fun in the short term. After waiting for a long time, many people will definitely get tired of it, especially in winter, when it is cold, they have to go up the mountain to cut wood, which is beyond the ordinary people's ability.
Therefore, from the actual situation, it is basically those low-income families who really go up the mountain to cut wood. For middle-class families or wealthy families, it is impossible for them to cut firewood on the mountain for a long time, let alone cut all the firewood on the mountain. For Poland, although they were cut off from natural gas by Russia, it does not mean that they can only rely on firewood to provide energy. Poland still has a lot of energy.
On the one hand, natural gas imported by Poland from Norway will be put into use. Poland dares to go to war with Russia because it does not use rubles to pay for natural gas imported from Russia, because they originally planned to completely stop importing natural gas from Russia by the end of 2022. Poland has this confidence because a few years ago, they established a natural gas pipeline with Norway to transport it from Norway to Poland via the Baltic Sea. This natural gas pipeline was originally planned to be put into operation in June 5438 +2022 10, and it is expected to transport10 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Poland every year, which can basically make up for Poland's natural gas import gap from Russia.
Now that Russia has cut off the supply of natural gas, we do not rule out that Poland may start this natural gas pipeline ahead of schedule. On the other hand, for Russia to cut off natural gas supply, in fact, Poland already has some plans, so the impact is not great in the short term. As early as March, Lan Ou indicated that it would completely stop importing natural gas from Russia by the end of 2022. When making this decision, I believe they already have some plans.
For example, Poland has increased its natural gas imports from Germany. On April 27th, the reverse supply of natural gas from Germany to Poland increased from 237,000 m3/h the previous day to 6,543.8+0.23 million m3/h, and a large part of these natural gas exported by Germany was actually imported from Russia. On the other hand, in addition to natural gas, some energy sources in Poland can be replaced by coal or other energy sources, so the short-term impact is not as great as expected by the market.
However, if many European countries follow Poland and Bulgaria and refuse to use rubles to pay for natural gas imported from Russia in the future, it will really have a great impact on the entire European energy market. At present, about 40% of the natural gas in the whole European market is imported from Russia. If Russia stops half or even completely cutting off the supply of natural gas to Europe, there will be a huge gap in energy prices in Europe. At that time, it is not ruled out that the price of natural gas will rise sharply, and it is estimated that the number of people going up the mountain to cut wood will increase.