Russian gas giant Gazprom increased natural gas supplies to Europe via pipelines in March by 4.5 percent compared to the previous month. In a year-on-year comparison, these deliveries even increased by around 26 percent. This was reported by the Reuters agency today, citing its calculations based on Gazprom’s reports on transit through Ukraine and data from the European gas transportation group Entsog.
Deliveries averaged 88.7 million cubic meters per day in March, compared with 84.9 million in February and 70.3 million in March last year, according to the data. In total, Gazprom exported roughly 7.74 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe in the first quarter of this year, Reuters wrote.
Europe has been a key export market for Russian gas in the past. However, supplies to Europe fell sharply as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Gazprom is therefore increasing supplies to China. It imported 22.7 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia last year, compared to 15.4 billion cubic meters the year before.
Russian gas supplies to Europe reached their peak in 2018 and 2019, when they amounted to roughly 175 to 180 billion cubic meters per year. However, in 2022, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, they fell to 63.8 billion cubic meters. Last year, they decreased significantly again, to 28.3 billion cubic meters, writes Reuters.
Last year, the majority of gas flowed to the Czech Republic via Germany, from Norway and from LNG terminals on the North Sea coast, respectively from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. From October, Russian gas purchased on the Slovak or Austrian market also began to flow into the Czech Republic, the total share of which eventually amounted to roughly seven percent of the total annual consumption of the Czech Republic.
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