Gazprom's natural gas exports to countries outside the former Soviet Union plunged by 41.3 percent year over year in January 2022, the Russian gas giant said on Tuesday, while it also reported a 1-percent annual increase in its gas production.
"The Company's gas deliveries are carried out as requested by consumers in full compliance with contractual obligations," said Gazprom, while Russia is being accused of deliberately withholding gas supplies to Europe, where inventory levels have sunk to historic lows.
According to Gazprom, which cites data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, working gas inventories in Europe's underground gas storage facilities were lagging behind last year's level by 27.2 percent as of January 30. As much as 81 percent of the gas injected during the summer period is already withdrawn from the facilities, Gazprom said, adding that "the total amount of working gas inventories in European UGS facilities was as low as 38.1 billion cubic meters on January 30, falling by 2.7 billion cubic meters below the historical minimum for this date."
Despite record-high natural gas production, Russia has not been sending much above its contractual obligations to Europe this winter season. This, combined with low storage levels at European sites, has resulted in a natural gas crunch in Europe and record-high prices that pushed up power prices and burdened many energy-intensive businesses in Europe.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Russia's pipeline exports declined by close to 25 percent annually due to lower transit flows via Belarus and Ukraine and reduced deliveries to Turkey, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its quarterly Gas Market report on Monday.
The agency was among the many voices in the industry to blame Russia for the energy crisis in Europe.
Low natural gas deliveries from Russia appear to have artificially tightened the European gas market, the IEA's Executive Director Fatih Birol said earlier this month, adding that energy systems "face significant risks" by relying too much on one supplier for a key energy source.
The Russia-Ukraine crisis is another concern for gas market and commodity analysts. A military action could disrupt Russian supply to Europe, while the U.S. could ax the still-waiting-to-become-operational Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
Comments
Russia is under no obligation to ship additional gas supplies to the EU other than what has been contracted for without long-term contracts and without a certification of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Moreover, Russia isn’t dependent on the EU gas market for its gas exports.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London
LNG is booming worldwide since long time but USA has higher costs than others like russia, iran, katar or israel
with fracking gas and for shipping it must be first changed to LNG instead using more gas local also for 700+ bar CNG cars, trucks, buses, trains and airplanes exporting more coal to asia needing more cheap coal. Much gas in europe was just political blocked in mediterian and north sea also fracking.