Gas who is back: Russian gas production jumped by close to 20% in May, its highest yoy growth over a decade.
In absolute terms this translates to just over 10 bcm, equating to the annual gas consumption of a country like Hungary.
The surge in production is largely driven by the strong recovery in exports up by ~20% and higher domestic demand (up by 17% yoy in the first 5 months).
Moreover, Russian storage sites closed the heating season at record low inventory levels, with ~12 bcm working gas storage left. this means that 300-350 mmcm/d needs to be injected through the gas summer to reach the 72.6 bcm fill target by the beginning of the next heating season.
There is no data on which fields are driving the supply recovery, but my bet would be that Bovanenkovo is now running close to its design capacity (115 bcm/y) and together with Zapolyarnoye is providing most of the additional upside swing.
What is your view? How will Russian supply evolve this year? Could we see a new record in gas production?
Source: Greg Molnar
See original post by Greg at LinkedIn.
