While the European Union has drastically cut its dependency on Russian natural gas since the invasion of Ukraine began, consumption of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has in fact soared during that time.
Estonia’s European commissioner, Kadri Simson (Center), who holds the energy portfolio, said: “It is a fact that Russia, having cut off nearly 90-100 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas, has replaced some of it with a greater capacity to produce LNG and has exported it, not to its historical markets in Central and Eastern Europe, but instead to LNG terminals on the west coast of Europe.
In 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, EU member states imported 13.5 billion cubic meters of LNG from Russia; for the first half of this year alone, the figure was 10.8 billion cubic meters.
Conversely with natural gas, Simson noted that while EU countries used to depend on Russian gas to up to 40 percent of its consumption, this figure has now dropped to 10 percent.
The main importers of Russian LNG are France, Spain, Belgium, all countries which had not been highly dependent on Russian pipeline gas before the war.
Read more: ERR.EE
