EU scoops up record amount of Russian LNG – Bloomberg

The volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped by Russia to the European Union hit a record high in 2024, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing ship-tracking data for key EU buyers. The surge occurred before Kiev’s suspension of gas transit through Ukraine to the bloc.

Ukraine opted not to prolong a five-year transit contract with Russian energy giant Gazprom beyond the end of 2024, halting the flow of natural gas from Russia to Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Italy, and Moldova.

The data tracked by the news agency showed that last year, exports of Russian gas to the bloc totaled some 30 billion cubic meters of gas, with more than half of that volume going via the pipeline system running through Ukrainian territory.

At the same time, the amount of super-chilled LNG shipped from Russia to the region in 2024 soared to an all-time high of 15.5 million tons, the news outlet reported, noting a significant surge in shipments compared to 2020, when the EU imported some 10.5 million tons of the fuel.

“Europe will still need gas as all its efforts to wean itself from Russian gas have not been successful,” Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics, told the news agency. “It will probably end up buying more Russian LNG to make up for the drop in natural gas imports from Russia.”

Moscow also exports gas to Europe through the TurkStream pipeline, which runs from Russia to Türkiye via the Black Sea and then to the border with EU member Greece. Two lines of the route provide gas supplies for the Turkish domestic market and supply central European customers, including Hungary and Serbia.

Supplies via the Yamal-Europe pipeline were halted back in 2022, after Poland terminated its gas agreement with Russia and Moscow blacklisted EuRoPol GAZ, a joint venture between Gazprom and Polish gas company PGNiG (which operates the route), in response to Western sanctions.

Despite a significant reduction in pipeline gas imports from Russia due to the Ukrainian conflict and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022, EU member states continued to purchase record amounts of the country’s LNG. The chilled fuel has only partially been targeted by the latest sanctions introduced by the bloc.

In June, Brussels banned ships from obtaining Russian LNG by engaging in re-loading operations, ship-to-ship transfers, or ship-to-shore transfers with the purpose of re-exporting it to third countries. The sanctions have a nine-month transition period.

The bloc has vocally committed itself to eliminating its reliance on Russian energy, but has continued to purchase LNG from Russia, which accounted for 15% of total imports of the fuel as of June, according to data tracked by commodities data provider Kpler.

Russia was ranked the second biggest supplier of LNG to the European continent after the US in the first half of 2024, according to data compiled by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which noted that the country’s share amounted to 21%.

In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is planning to continue to increase the share of Russian LNG on world markets, highlighting that the fuel is one of the top-requested energy products globally.