East-bound natural gas flows via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which usually travel west from Russia to Europe, almost doubled in reverse mode on Thursday, data from German network operator Gascade showed.

This is the ninth week since Dec. 21 that the link between Poland and Germany has been operating in the reverse direction, exerting upward pressure on European gas prices.

Flows from Germany to Poland via the Mallnow metering point rose to more than 2.43 million kilowatt hours per hour (kWh/h) on Thursday morning, from about 1.26 million kWh/h in the previous 13 hours.

Renominations, or bids, to flow gas from Germany to Poland also expected at about 2.4 million kWh/h until Friday morning. The pipeline usually accounts for about 15% of Russia’s annual westbound supply of gas to Europe and Turkey.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom, which can book pipeline capacity at daily auctions, had not ordered any transit capacity for February and March via the route.

It also did not book capacity for the second and third quarters of the year.

On another major route for Russian deliveries to Europe, for supply to Slovakia from Ukraine via the Velke Kapusany border point, capacity nominations for Thursday remained down at 264,221 MWh, versus 281,226 MWh on Wednesday.

Nominations via this route hit a 2022 high of 850,143 MWh at the start of February but have eased to less than half that in the past week. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague Editing by David Goodman )