Europe without Russian gas

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Baltnews on the LNG role in the current gas supply of EU countries and the reasons for the large share of spot purchases in its imports.

"Europe is now highly dependent on LNG. Liquefied gas has replaced Russian pipeline gas. And if earlier all the additional consumption that could occur during a sharp cold snap was provided by gas from Russia, now LNG plays this role. From January to September 2023, liquefied natural gas accounted for 42% of all EU "blue fuel" imports. At the same time, Russia accounts for about 9%. And with such a high dependence, any fluctuations in supplies are fraught with a shortage. This is due to the fact that most of the transactions are spot. There are also long–term contracts, but there are few of them," Belogoryev said.

"Energy companies from the EU do not sign long-term contracts mainly because of the low-carbon agenda. No one understands what the demand will be in 2030, because Europe must abandon hydrocarbons for the sake of ecology. The forecasts that we have now show a very large spread. Very few experts predict an increase in demand. Basically, everyone says that gas consumption will decrease. One of the low-carbon scenarios generally assumes that demand in the EU will fall to 230-240 billion cubic meters by 2030 (last year it was 356 billion cubic meters), that is, by 40%. Moreover, these scenarios cannot be called fantastic, they are quite realistic and come from the decisions that have already been made, for example, the climate law, and from the technologies that have begun to be used," he added.