The gas crisis in the EU will last for three years

Alexey Belogoryev, Deputy Principal Director on Energy Studies of the Institute for Energy and Finance, gave a comment to the Ekonomika Segodnya publication on the prospects for Russian pipeline gas supplies to the EU countries after Nord Stream was decommissioned.

In conditions when a sabotage was carried out against Nord Streams, and the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline is under Russian sanctions, Russian exports can only be carried out through the Ukrainian GTS and the European continuation of the Turkish Stream.

“Turkish Stream supplies Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary, these are its main sales markets in the European Union, until April there were still deliveries to Bulgaria, but now they have been stopped. Part of the gas goes from Hungary to Austria, perhaps something is distributed further,” the energy expert concludes.

“Since May 11, Gazprom has been keeping the volume of transit through Ukraine at the level of 39-43 million cubic meters of gas per day, and this is taking into account supplies to Moldova. All this suggests that there are no opportunities to increase Russian exports. Most likely, in the coming months, if nothing new happens, the total volume of Russian exports will not exceed 80 million cubic meters of gas per day,” the analyst notes.

“Until the normalization of relations between the Russian Federation and the EU, which is unlikely to happen in 2023, we cannot expect an increase in Gazprom's supplies in excess of 80 million cubic meters of gas per day. If Nord Stream 1 had continued to operate, then in the spring Germany would have resumed gas exports in this direction and somehow settled technical issues with the supply and repair of turbines,” Belogoryev concludes.