Can Europe Survive Winter Without Russian Gas?
Analysts are examining that question again, but clearly it becomes less of an issue each Winter.
OilPrice.com reports that Europe still imports about 1/3 of the total amount of Natural Gas (pipeline plus LNG) from Russia that it did in 2021 before the war. (~150 mcm/day, vs 450)
That is going to change at the end of this year, when the transshipment through Ukraine to Hungary, Slovakia and Austria ends. Before that time, storage for this Winter should be well filled.
“The remaining gas flows are roughly split between LNG (4.8bcm in Q2), pipeline flows through Ukraine (4.1 bcm in Q2) and other pipeline routes (primarily flows via Turkey into Bulgaria (3.9 bcm in Q2) as well as a small (negligible) flow via Belarus into Lithuania). Europe has now emerged from two winter seasons with plenty of gas despite dramatically cutting Russian imports.
Europe’s gas stores were nearly 60% full by the end of the winter season in April 2024, a record for the close of the winter season....
...energy commodity analysts at Standard Chartered have reported that there has been zero progress in reducing (Russian) imports since flows through the Nord Stream pipeline system ceased. On the contrary, Europe’s gas imports from Russia have climbed ~50% since Q1-2023.” (from the low baseline when Russia turned off flows at the start of the war - still only 1/3 the pre-war total however)...
...commodity analysts have pointed out that non-Russian LNG flows into the EU have declined by ~140 mcm/d since April, enough, if restored, to replace Russian LNG almost three times over (Indeed, enough to replace all current Russian imports - pipeline and LNG. The infrastructure capacity is already there in total, plus a large margin). According to the analysts, removing the last Russian molecules from the EU is more a matter of political will...
...Bruegel, a Belgium-based economic thinktank... has taken an in depth look at how the EU would fare if the flow of Russian gas to Europe were to be disrupted.
The main conclusion is that the EU could not only go through the next winter without Russian gas, but it could also do so without having to experience economic catastrophe.”
(Russian LNG is not currently embargoed by the EU, but Russian LNG could be sold to other customers at somewhat less profit anyway, so it is not as important/effective for reducing Russian revenue.
Bottom line: Another big chunk of Gazprom’s exports (Druzhba pipeline) is going away in about 4 months, leaving only the Turkstream pipeline operating, of the four major systems before the war - and Europe will do fine without it. Turkey is now building out capacity to fill Turkstream with Azerbaijani and Central Asian gas instead of Russian, at a hectic pace.)
When Putin is gone, it will take 3-6 months to start the gas from the former Russian Federation. They must have money to pay the war damages, besides, there are large gas fields in Ukraine. This means that the sooner we can get rid of the mass murderers in the Kremlin, the sooner we can begin the arduous road to normalcy.