Pride or gas. Europe faces a difficult choice

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the portal Finam.ru, whether or not the EU will ease its restrictions on Russian energy imports in connection with the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

“The situation with oil reserves in Europe is far from critical. The physical shortage of petroleum products is still far away. The EU countries fulfilled the IEA standard for maintaining oil and petroleum products reserves at the level of at least 90% of net imports. But with gas reserves in UGS and LNG at the receiving terminals, the situation is more tense, but on the other hand, the heating season is almost over, and therefore the main problem in the coming months is the timely filling of UGS by next winter. There are serious problems with this,” Alexey Belogoryev noted.

According to Belogoryev, as of March 2026, there are still almost no formal restrictions on the import of pipeline and liquefied natural gas. The import of gas condensate produced under LNG projects and, of course, the supply of oil through Druzhba is also allowed.