Despite Ukraine war, Europe imported even more Russian gas last year
149 comments
·March 28, 2025Symbiote
Arnt
IIRC there was a significant decrease in late 2024.
The biggest gas distributor in Austra had a contract that basically couldn't be cancelled. However, the contract specified that the Russians deliver the gas, and the Russians did that through Uraine, on a contract that expired late in 2024. At that point the Russian exports to Austra dropped to approximately zero, and I haven't heard any complaints from Austria.
There are some other customers (more willing than the Austrians) who also got transit through Ukraine, their purchases also decreased drastically at the same time.
Arnt
Replying to myself — I'd forgotten Viktor Orban's vain hope that somehow, the Ukrainians might be persuaded to provide transit. "Maybe if we buy the gas in Russia such that when it crosses Ukraine it's European gas."
null
_DeadFred_
China and India purchased $7 billion of Russian oil last month - 85% of all Russian oil exports. These sales dwarf natural gas sales.
https://energyandcleanair.org/february-2025-monthly-analysis...
aaron695
[dead]
adolph
"Despite?" I thought the EU payments to Russia were propping up the war.
On the other hand, hydrocarbons are a global commodity. If EU bought from somewhere else, then Russian methane would just substitute for whoever would have bought from that somewhere else. Buying from somewhere else just increases costs through use of less efficient transportation than whatever pipelines remain.
And on that same other hand, hydrocarbon extraction isn't free revenue for the Russian state. Unless Russia is willing to go the way of Venezuela and starve its golden goose, the total free revenue is probably something similar to the profit margin of an oil company[0], which is pretty volatile. If an average margin is 20%, EU's 21.9B of fuel purchases is more like 2.4B of Russian govt support compared to 18.7B to Ukraine.
0. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012015/what-average...
blululu
This is a good point but also Russia is a nation state not a company. The 80% of the revenue spent on operating costs is just invested in their economy and creates jobs and pays taxes. For a state enterprise, the balance sheet is very different than a private company.
adolph
> The 80% of the revenue spent on operating costs is just invested in their economy and creates jobs and pays taxes.
Yes and also not the full 21.9B claimed by the article. I wonder how one could contemplate the different levels of external war that could be exerted by a country based on its external economic ties. One the one hand is going full juche with no external economic ties (which the DPRK isn't quite), and on the other is some fully external state run on banking or tourism like Liechtenstein or Maldives.
1970-01-01
Europe's future is building more (solar and nuclear) or (gas and coal). Solar scales very quickly. Nuclear very slowly. Have both or suffer the fate that gas and coal brings. Politics does a fantastic job of messing simple ideas; it's really that simple to understand this energy crisis.
ZeroGravitas
Solar and wind and batteries and EVs and heat pumps are probably the better options for quickly making a difference.
There's a culture war about each item on that list, oddly enough.
ben_w
PV, yes indeed makes a difference and quickly. But I've not seen much culture war on this. (There was however a group on my street protesting, simultaneously, wind turbines and 5G…)
Heat pumps are also good, but (as far as I can tell) burdened with a high sticker price. Great option when you replace an existing heating system at the end of life or a new build (we've got one in our new build), but I wouldn't say they are a "quickly" making a difference.
You're right about them being a culture war item though. I've seen political posters around here by people upset by them.
Batteries are cheap these days, but I think we're still a way off from manufacturing at the scale needed for "quickly". The factories are going up pretty quickly, just not fast enough given the context of "can we stop giving any money to oil and gas producing countries we no longer like?"
I think the hard part of batteries isn't culture war at the moment, it's that people are still pattern matching the term to AA's and drawing false conclusions about what's possible.
sshine
There’s a culture war about heat pumps?
I know that the taxation on renewables is always touchy because the technology and how electricity gets routed and used changed faster than tax law.
ZeroGravitas
Yes, especially AfD in Germany but in other countries too:
https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-lambrou-alternative-f...
adrianN
Nuclear is not financially viable in a market dominated by renewables.
bilbo0s
Which is why government will need to foot the bill as a strategic priority.
No one is saying that it is something that should interest private sector investors. Obviously on a spreadsheet it has no chance of comparing favorably against slapping up windmills.
It needs to be looked at in terms of national security.
T-A
The Swedish approach:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-proposes-stat...
adrianN
In terms of national security you want hydrogen turbines, electrolysis, and batteries.
11235813213455
It's crazy to hear the anti-nuclear, or anti-solar people, we obviosuly need a mix of everything, but above all we need to reduce our use
zdragnar
We're not going to be reducing our use if we are also replacing fossil fuels with electricity, short of rationing.
diggan
> anti-solar people
Anti-nuclear folks I've heard about (and argued myself against) in both Spain and Sweden, but anti-solar people? Never heard anyone being against solar, what are the arguments for not having solar granted you have enough sun and besides any temporary economic arguments?
grues-dinner
This kind of thing: https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-conten...
On the face of it it sounds somewhat sensible point by point, but the more you did in, the more it just boils down to finding excuses, any excuse at all, for NIMBYism, often from rich urbanites who moved to the country and want it to be an episode of Downton Abbey, and fret about their house price more then anything else in the world.
This one tries a particularly hamfisted and tendentious "but Ukraine", neglecting that the fucked domestic energy situation is heavily impacted by Ukraine right now.
Timon3
The arguments I've heard (even though most are wrong, they are still brought up):
- the energy they produce is too unreliable
- their production creates more pollution than they save
- the lifespan is too short to be worth it
- they require too much land that should be used differently
pjc50
The weird thing is the extent to which pro-nuclear people are against other, cheaper, renewables.
zdragnar
I think the argument is that cheaper renewables are only cheaper because they externalize the cost of storage to either expensive batteries or tech that doesn't exist yet.
Nuclear, otoh, provides constant output (barring maintenance windows) and has the full cost of the plant, from construction to decommissioning, built into it.
We've got nuclear submarines that run just fine- the prototypal tiny reactor. Had we built more and smaller nuclear power plants decades ago, we could have averted a lot of emissions and so on and so forth.
null
amai
Nowadays nuclear power plants only make sense in case you want to build nuclear weapons. Just for power production they are just too expensive.
seydor
EU has gas reserves that it does not want to exploit. It's as if it's waiting for something ...
toomuchtodo
They might also be able to rely on Canada ("LNG Canada" export facility starting up currently) in the near future for LNG imports. OgsyedIE's point about using exports to crowd out Russian gas is spot on, you have to drown the global LNG market in cheap gas until Russia fails.
US EIA: North America’s LNG export capacity is on track to more than double by 2028 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62984 - September 3, 2024
France recently (~2 years) discovered a fossil hydrogen reserve (~46 million tons), but that will take time to develop and LNG imports are a potential bridge while also providing time for renewables and storage deployments to continue to push out gas for generation.
France strikes Hydrogen gold: World’s largest Hydrogen reserve worth $92 billion could make it a global leader in clean energy revolution - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/f... - March 24th, 2025
French drillers may have stumbled upon a mammoth hydrogen deposit - https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/french-drillers-may-... - September 20th, 2023
[EU] Electricity from renewable sources reaches 47% in 2024 - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d... - March 19th, 2025
diggan
> They might also be able to rely on Canada
Maybe a dumb question, but wouldn't that have to be transported by ships rather than pipeline in that case, if it's supposed to go all the way to Europe? Sounds a lot more expensive if so.
toomuchtodo
Not a dumb question. That is what the LNG export market is: cooling fossil gas down cryogenically to liquid natural gas at an export facility, loading onto ships, and unloading at an import terminal (which can float and be repositioned geographically as demand warrants). Is it expensive? The question is: compared to what? For Europe, is it cheaper to lob military hardware at Russia or to pay a premium for gas (vs buying from Gazprom), causing the Russian economy to head towards failure? You're spending the fiat either way. Price is what you pay, optionality is potentially what you get.
> [Gazprom] Management misjudged how resolute European capitals would be, according to one of the executives, who said the thinking inside the company was that Europe would quickly be back "begging" for Russian gas supplies to resume. Despite the economic pain of higher energy costs, the EU has not rolled back sanctions.
> "We proved to be wrong," the executive said.
> U.S. gas exporters quickly moved to replace Russian gas in Europe. The U.S. has become the biggest exporter of LNG to the continent, with supplies tripling since 2021. Europe still buys Russia's sea-borne liquefied natural gas (LNG), but mainly from Gazprom's rivals, Novatek's Yamal LNG plant.
> The European Union aims to end its use of Russian fossil fuels by 2027 and its overall gas consumption has decreased in part due to a shift to renewable energy sources.
Russia's high-flying gas exporter [Gazprom] crippled as Europe stays away - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gazproms-grandeur-fa... | https://archive.today/3lHKy - March 13, 2025
LNG Market - Comprehensive Study Report & Recent Trends - https://introspectivemarketresearch.com/reports/lng-market/ - August 2024
Economics of Gas Transportation by Pipeline and LNG - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-86884-0_... | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86884-0_2
(commodities market participant, no current LNG exposure, think in systems)
FirmwareBurner
>EU has gas reserves that it does not want to exploit
Because of environmentalism. We want gas, but we also want it from someone willing to tear up his back yard for it, so we can cosplay as being eco-friendly.
benrutter
That's a pretty cynical take. Setting up oil and gas reserves is a longterm thing, I think it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure, even if moving off of exist damaging fuel isn't immediate.
rapnie
A long-term thing. In the Netherlands decades ago a huge gas reserve was found. And it made us Dutch (and esp. Exxon and Shell) rich. And the region where it was discovered? The Dutch government left the people in the province of Groningen with billions of earthquake damage, destroyed homes, and a fight of a lifetime to get proper compensation. This has been a huge topic in Dutch politics for some time now, and finally the decision was to close the gas fields to spare further damages to the inhabitants living above them.
JumpCrisscross
> it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure
The EU has flowed like a trillion dollars into LNG infrastructure with longer payback timelines than wells.
Analemma_
This kind of behavior is totally in-character for Europe though. Europeans want to have all the fruits of a high-income society, but they want to outsource all the morally dicey bits. This pattern is constant: immigration (they want the migrants to go away, but want to seem enlightened and progressive, so they pay Tunisia and Morocco a bunch of money to have the concentration camps stay out of sight and out of mind), defense (they want national defense but don't want to pay for it or look militarized, so they underspent for decades and offloaded all the costs onto America, which was a viable strategy until all of a sudden it wasn't), and so on. It's not hard to see European energy policy following exactly the same pattern.
mhh__
I do care about the environment but at the moment I'm watching Britain (i.e. home, there are many like it but this one is mine) basically sacrifice itself at the alter of net zero while India proudly announces that it's extracted a _billion_ tons of coal this year.
Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear.
I remember having conversations with "serious" adults when I was 14 about why it was mad to bet the house on wind and solar (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later, we really, really, need that baseload.
There are no energy-poor rich countries.
Some are completely happy being poorer and colder but I think something will snap soon in Britain in particular. Blair will have Ed Miliband disapeared soon.
brink
> That's a pretty cynical take
Okay, so is Trump playing the tarrif game to bring manufacturing back home, or is cynicism and bad faith only okay when it's about US conservatives? Because the hypocrisy is on full display here.
I'm fine with being fair to the EU and giving them the benefit of the doubt, but only if we're fair to everyone.
dartos
If they’re already tearing up their back yard, wouldn’t it be strictly more environmentally friendly to buy from them rather than tear up our own back yard?
bpodgursky
There's no real environmental impact to drilling the North Sea other than carbon emissions, which obviously happen either way.
marcusverus
No world leader honestly expects Russia (population 150M, GDP $2T (nominal)) to start a general European war. NATO's combined population is 950M and their combined GDP is $50T. Not even the Russians are that crazy.
The people scaremongering about the Russian menace are playing a cynical game designed to drum up support for the war in Ukraine. They understand that people are selfish, and are thus more likely to support the war in Ukraine if they believe that it keeps the Russian bear from their doorstep.
tim333
Not a full on war maybe buy low level attacks and attempts to subvert the political system to put in pro Russian permanent leaders like Orban, and their attempt to do likewise in Romania. If they did take over Ukraine I'm sure they'd start making opportunistic threats over the Baltics.
anovikov
This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. Ukraine gas transit has ended so this year, the numbers will go down again to new historic low.
Vast majority of what's left is LNG, which is rather hard to shut off because it's easy to conceal it's origin, but for the same reason, it's not a source of any danger to Europe: Putin can't shut it off from his side, either - because the stream is managed by international traders so there is no way he could say "no selling it to Europeans". Goal of getting rid of Russian energy was to limit political influence/blackmail potential and LNG imports are safe from that.
Apart from LNG, there is Turkstream. It provides little and will be shut down by 2027. There is very little friction about it.
ajsnigrutin
Yes, instead of cheaper gas via pipelines, we now pay more for more expensive LNG, originating from the same source. The alternative is what... even more expensive american LNG?
anovikov
Amount of Russian LNG that enters the system is insignificant, don't exaggerate it. It's 15% of overall LNG imports at most. Price for all LNG is the same because it circulates on the same, global market. Pipeline gas comes with political liabilities.
And the real alternative is of course, deep cuts in gas consumption. Which is what RepowerEU is trying to achieve.
By the way, 2024 Russian gas imports show a slight increase only because 2023 decrease went ahead of plan. 2023 plan was 68 bcm and only 45 bcm were imported, even 2024 went ahead of reduction plan and 2025 is certain to be ahead of plan, too.
wewxjfq
Given that Russia had troubles supplying gas via pipeline (remember the five NS1 pumps that failed and the sixth pump that had to be shut down?) and given that Baltic infrastructure is constantly being damaged, the more expensive LNG should be considered a risk premium. It's harder to attack and can be diverted in times of need, one of the reasons Europe got so unscathed through the gas crisis.
And if pipeline gas is cheaper is also up for debate, because gas is gas to the markets and the long-running supply contracts (which turned out to be worthless because Russia was suffering a conveniently-timed force majeure) had indexed prices.
yalogin
Why does this post from a university read like a political hit job? I would expect such a low effort post from a media entity looking for clicks not Yale. It does provide a critical piece of information that they are using shadow vessels to hide the purchase.
However, they don't go into historic numbers and if they really are trying to build any alternatives to Russian gas or not. Building something to replace as critical an asset as gas takes time. It would have benefitted everyone (the readers) if they dug into that a bit more
dragonwriter
Its not “from a university”, it is from a magazine that happens to be at a University.
Organizations hosted at universities having and publishing strong political viewpoints is... not uncommon.
pjc50
Hmm, there's no byline.
_DeadFred_
[flagged]
OgsyedIE
The sanctions regime was remarked on as poorly-thought out as early as Q3 2022 IIRC. Even though it's a Doomberg talking point, it remains true that the only way to really crush Russian market share in the European energy mix is to crowd them out with greater output volumes of competition from other gas exporters.
ossobuco
The same leadership that at the start of the sanctions regime claimed Russia's economy was about to collapse is still in power, mostly uncontested. I remember Mario Draghi's condescending and moralizing rhetoric: "Do you want peace or air conditioning?" Turns out we got no peace and the bills still increased by two times.
Notice how those who urge citizens to sacrifice for a higher cause never have to sacrifice anything themselves.
OgsyedIE
In many cases it doesn't even appear to be special interests, just an ideological opposition to arithmetic, one that the voters don't punish them for.
pjc50
Voters don't want to do arithmetic either.
ossobuco
Not that voters have any mechanism to punish them. EU elections have very little consequence on the appointment of the comission.
simfoo
No wonder, seeing how conservative and right-leaning parties are doing everything in their power to delay renewables wherever they can. In Germany new power distribution infrastructure keeps being delayed despite desperate need (at times most wind turbines and solar farms are shut down remotely because the power cannot be transported to consumers) and they managed to slow down deployment of heat pumps to bring down gas usage used for heating.
Recent estimates reckon that last years conservative campaign against heat pumps led to a rocking 24 billion € extra spending on gas (https://www.focus.de/earth/energie/auf-kosten-der-verbrauche...)
pjc50
I'm reminded of "insulate Britain", a protest group advocating for government-subsidized energy efficiency. People absolutely hated them because of their traffic-stopping tactics.
banqjls
[flagged]
simfoo
Markets are blocking nuclear, because they can still calculate costs. And costs is the reason not to go nuclear.
DAGdug
How much of this is intrinsic to nuclear versus due to regulatory requirements (various taxes including subsidies for certain renewables, early decommissioning)? My sense always was that this was about the latter rather than the former, but I’m happy to be educated.
whoknowsidont
The implied myth here is incredibly annoying to read. It takes 10 seconds to verify why nuclear power was not deployed more readily, and it's not what you're implying.
nothercastle
The more renewables on the grid the more gas you need. Gas is required to balance out solar and wind until battery technology matures. Renewable eliminate the need for costly coal and nuclear but they need gas to deal with times of low solar and wind.
ta1243
So if you have a demand for say 100Twh a year and generation 1Twh from renewable, you need very little gas. On the other hand if you generate 60Twh renewable, you need more gas?
Is that what you're saying?
wang_li
They are saying that if 50% of your generating capacity drops to 1% of you need a lot of gas powered plants to make up that difference. If your renewables represent 1% of the generating capacity you need very little gas to make up that difference.
adrianN
No, you need more gas turbines, you don’t need more gas.
simfoo
This is a lie that has been disproven repeatedly and is part of the disinformation that is spread all over the internet. What _is_ required is flexible power distribution and storage infrastructure
nothercastle
How ever you do it you need to time shift. Either though batteries or usage or ideally both. The interim solution is gas. Because solar is so cheap it makes sense to take other more expensive and slow power sources offline but that does increase how much gas you use even if the total fossil fuel consumption goes down.
flir
Timeshifting the load helps too.
ramesh31
We thought modern industrialized nations could never go to total war again because people simply wouldn't accept it. Turns out they did.
pjc50
It only takes one dictator, then the wishes of the people become irrelevant. Or propagandized; I'm sure the war is quite popular in Russia still despite horrific casualties.
ben_w
To an extent.
As I understand it, Russia hasn't been able to actually call it a "war" domestically, they did burn through prisoners rather than trained forces until they ran out of people willing to believe the chances of surviving to enjoy early release, and Russian forces have been only partially rather than fully mobilised with their conscripts mostly kept back from the front line for a while now due to domestic concerns.
rdtsc
> Despite Ukraine War
A war that started in 2014. They watched Putin annex Crimea then proceed to built stronger ties with him.
It's also worth pointing out that countries like Germany had a hand in making sure Ukraine won't make it to NATO. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bucharest_summit
> The Alliance did not offer a Membership Action Plan to Georgia or Ukraine, largely due to the opposition of Germany
Moreover, US govt urged them not to do it but they did it anyway: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-scolded-germany-for...
So it's not really that they had "only 2-3 years", they had more then a decade to sever ties and strengthen their military. But they did they opposite.
At the same time, the realpolitik take is this all not too inconvenient for Europe. Give Ukranians some loans, send a few tanks, hug and kiss Zelensky in photo-ops when he visits. Let them keep Russian busy and grinding them down. It's not their soldiers after all, it's Ukrainians. If Ukranians lose they can go "oh well, too bad" and then keep buying Russian gas and oil.
pjc50
Germany appear to have had their own problems with being compromised by Russia: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wirecard-fugitive-jan-m...
There should have been a much stronger response to Russia shooting down an airliner full of Dutch nationals! And for using chemical weapons in a UK city! And yet everyone wanted to keep the gas and money flowing.
Another angle to keep an eye on is shipments from Germany, especially of advanced machine tools. There's lots of stuff that's very difficult to substitute from anywhere else, and should be much more thoroughly embargoed.
ashoeafoot
never again, but with imperialist characteristics. The saints are always the worst bastards
graemep
The EU, not Europe. Europe includes the UK, Norway, Switzerland etc. Most of Russia's population too.
braiamp
This article is missing the point. If the price of energy is below the cost for Russia, the sanctions are working. The sanctions is that they will not pay market price for that energy.
neilwilson
That misses the fairly obvious point that Russia uses Roubles, which it issues.
If Russian Gas is sold for any foreign currency amount at all, then that is foreign currency it can use elsewhere. Russia can maintain the operational plant with its own money.
Market price is irrelevant. Gas is swapped for items Russia can't make itself. Russia isn't interested in foreign tokens. It's interested in foreign made stuff.
mystified5016
I can't think of a single example of "minting money to pay for war" ever went poorly for any nation. Nope, not a one. It has certainly never once destroyed a leader or his entire nation.
neilwilson
Given that's how all nations conduct war, it would be difficult to see how it could be done otherwise.
Keynes' phamplet "How to Pay for the War"[0] is a good description of how the 'minting money' mechanism should be controlled in wartime.
bpodgursky
WWII went badly for Germany but it's important to keep in mind it went badly for everyone else too.
golergka
Are they below the cost or below the market price? If they're below the cost, it would mean that Russia is just spending money to provide Europe with gas, which does not make any sense. But if it's simply below market price it means that Russia is still turning a profit on the gas, just not as much as it could have otherwise.
XorNot
They can be taking a loss and it's still less of a loss then suspending production.
At the scale of industry we're talking about, a lot of counterintuitive things happen that make perfect sense in context.
bestouff
It makes perfect sense if they want to keep the market.
Official statistics are here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Imports from Russia dropped from just over €60bn in 2022 to around €10bn in 2023, but decreased very little since then.