Data from Bloomberg shows that the amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia to the European Union (EU) in 2024 will reach an all-time high of 15.5 million tons, a sharp increase compared to 10.5 million tons in 2020.
The development comes ahead of Ukraine's official termination of its five-year gas transit contract with Russian energy giant Gazprom at the end of 2024.
The cancellation of the transit contract led to the cessation of gas flows from Russia through the territory of Ukraine to EU countries such as Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Italy and EU candidate country Moldova.
Despite efforts to cut energy imports from Russia since the conflict in Ukraine and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022, the EU remains heavily dependent on Russian gas. According to Kpler, LNG from Russia accounts for 15% of the EU’s total imports by June 2024.
“Europe still needs gas, as efforts to decouple from Russian energy have not yielded the expected results. The EU may have to increase imports of Russian LNG to compensate for the decline in pipeline gas imports,” said Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics.
In addition to the transit route through Ukraine, Russia still exports gas via the TurkStream pipeline running from Russia to Türkiye, supplying gas to the Turkish domestic market and Central European customers such as Hungary and Serbia. However, other routes such as the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline have been discontinued since 2022 due to Poland's cancellation of the agreement with Russia.
In this context, LNG has become an alternative. However, the EU has also introduced a number of new sanctions to limit the re-export of Russian LNG. From June 2024, Russian LNG tankers are prohibited from transferring or re-exporting to third countries, with a transition period of 9 months.
Despite the EU’s stated determination to wean itself off Russian energy, data shows that this will not be easy. Russia remains a key player in Europe’s energy supply, especially as alternative sources fail to fully meet demand.
The EU's record imports of Russian LNG demonstrate that, regardless of sanctions or political efforts, the energy problem remains a major challenge that the EU has not been able to completely solve.
