Gazprom announced a complete halt to Nord Stream supplies, while the company’s shares soared by almost 31% after the dividend recommendation – these and other important news by Wednesday morning, August 31, in our daily review.

Supplies via the Nord Stream gas pipeline have been completely stopped, Gazprom said. “Today, scheduled preventive work begins at the gas compressor unit,” Gazprom added. The company warned about the suspension of supplies on August 19, specifying later that the pumping will be stopped from 04:00 Moscow time on August 31 to 04:00 Moscow time on September 3.

The exchange price of gas on the ICE Futures platform exceeded $2,900 per thousand cubic meters. The cost of October futures at the TTF hub in the Netherlands at the beginning of trading rose by 5.5% to €280 per 1 MWh, or $2,944 per thousand cubic meters, taking into account the current rate, according to the ICE exchange. The increase in gas prices occurred against the backdrop of Gazprom’s announcement that supplies through the Nord Stream pipeline have been completely stopped.

Shares of Gazprom at the opening of trading soared by 31%, to 267.25 as of 10:19 Moscow time, according to trading data on the Moscow Exchange. The last time the paper traded at this level was on June 30, the day the shareholders’ meeting did not support the recommendation on dividends for 2021. On Tuesday, August 30, after the market closed, it became known that the company’s board of directors recommended paying interim dividends for the first half of 2022 in the amount of 51.03 rubles. per share. The total amount of payments in this case will amount to 1.208 trillion rubles.

More than 80% of Russians have partially or completely lost their savings after February 2022, Forbes writes, citing the results of an AlfaStrakhovanie survey. Only 19% of those surveyed said they had not lost anything. 8% admitted that they completely lost their financial airbag. Every fifth (21%) reported the loss of almost all savings, 52% lost a small part of them.

The Accounts Chamber reported an increase in total federal budget revenues by 24.4% and oil and gas revenues by 1.7 times. The share of oil and gas revenues in the total volume of federal budget revenues in the first half of the year amounted to 45.5%, having increased by 12 percentage points (p.p.), RBC reports with reference to the operational report of the Accounts Chamber for January-June 2022.