Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom said on Friday it had reopened one of its major pipelines to Europe following a maintenance shutdown on Tuesday.

The Yamal-Europe pipeline, running from Russia's arctic north to Germany via Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, was shut down for 30 hours' work at 1200 GMT on September 2.

The pipeline then delivered gas at half capacity until GMT 1800 on Sept. 4, when it resumed full gas deliveries.

"The Yamal-Europe pipeline is fully operational and the company has resumed normal gas supply to customers," Gazprom said in a statement.

It was repaired by EuroPolGaz and WinGas, Gazprom's Polish and German ventures.

Gazprom, the world's largest gas company and supplier of a quarter of Europe's gas, said that European customers were compensated for the shortage by increased deliveries via an alternative route, the Ukrainian Uzhgorod pipeline.

At full capacity, the pipeline delivers 100 million cubic meters of gas per day.

The pipeline, which runs from the Yamal peninsula in Russia's Arctic north to Frankfurt on Oder on the Polish-German border, carries Russian gas for over 4,000 km (2,485 miles).

Poland used 13.6 billion cubic meters of gas in 2007, of which 6.2 billion was imported from Russia.

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