Europe “Through Gritted Teeth” Increases Russian Gas Imports Month After Month
Energy imports from Russia are against EU policy, but Russian gas is cheap and “accessible”
There are three routes that Russia uses to export its gas to Europe: the former Soviet gas pipeline that runs through Ukraine, the Black Sea Turkish Stream pipeline, which, in addition to Turkey, supplies Russian green fuel to some southern European and Balkan countries, and exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
While the volume of natural gas exported from Russia to Europe through the pipeline that crosses Ukraine has remained stable (42-43 million cubic meters per day), European countries have month after month increased their imports of Russian gas, which passes through Turkey, as well as LNG, which is selling like hotcakes, especially in France, Spain, and Belgium.
In the first 7 months of 2024, the EU’s gas imports from the Turkish Stream pipeline increased year-on-year by 40.5% to 9.26 billion cubic meters of methane. In July alone, Russian deliveries rose 29% to 1.5 billion m3 compared to the previous month. That is, in July, European countries consumed about 92 million cubic meters of Russian gas per day through the “Ukrainian” (43 million m3) and “Turkish” gas pipelines (48.8 million m3).
While in 2022, the year the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict began, Russia sold 63.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe, in 2023 Russian exports recorded a sharp 55.6% decline, dropping to just 28.3 billion cubic meters. At its peak, in 2018-2019, annual Russian gas flows to the Old Continent reached between 175 and 180 billion m3. During the period January through July 2024, Russia exported to Europe 18.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas, +23% compared to the same period of last year.
Russian gas supplies have been under scrutiny in recent months as a five-year gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expires on December 31, 2024. And while Moscow has signaled that it is “ready to continue gas transit,” the Kiev government has said it “does not want to extend the agreement with the Kremlin.”
Russian gas, both pipeline and LNG, is significantly cheaper than similar Arab, African, and American gas. This is one of the significant reasons why many European countries, most notably France, are increasing their imports of Russian LNG. Russian LNG deliveries to France more than doubled in the first half of this year (according to the latest data), and overall, EU countries imported a total of 7% more Russian LNG over the January-June 2024 period compared to the same period of the previous year.
In particular, French energy companies imported 4.4 billion cubic meters of Russian LNG in the above period, compared to 2 billion cubic meters in the same period last year.
