A prolonged cold spell across much of Europe continues to disrupt the supply of natural gas within Germany , but increasingly milder weather, increased supplies from Russia and robust storage levels have stabilized the situation somewhat, said utilities and energy network operators Friday.

However, the disruptions have created bottlenecks in shipping natural gas to customers in southern Germany , with some gas-fired power plants temporarily receiving either less fuel than usual or none at all in the past few days, a gas transmission network operator said.

The country's two largest importers of gas--E.ON Ruhrgas and Wingas--said they are fully supplying all their customers despite the ongoing disruptions. E.ON Ruhrgas is a unit of E.ON AG (EOAN.XE). Wingas is the 50-50 joint venture between German chemicals giant BASF SE's (BAS.XE) Wintershall unit and Gazprom OAO (GAZP.RS).

"E.ON Ruhrgas is well primed despite the present supply reductions from Gazprom Export and fulfills its contractual supply commitments," said a company spokesman.

Russian natural-gas supplies to Europe have been curtailed for more than a week now as particularly cold winter weather increased Russia 's domestic demand and the country's gas monopoly Gazprom failed to increase production to meet the higher demand.

E.ON Ruhrgas, Wingas and RWE AG (RWE.XE)--a third major player in the German gas market--said in unison that they are still receiving less from Gazprom than usual. However, Russian supplies have increased in the past few days, helping to stabilize the situation, the companies said without further quantifying the present supply reductions.
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