EU January Gas Imports: Gazprom’s Shipments to Europe Jump 35.3% y/y

gas stockpiles level stood at 70.17% at the end of January, helping ease TTF prices which dropped by 3.2% during the month (with 5 charts)

To assess the success of European efforts to shift away from Russian gas, the EOA issues a monthly tracker of the EU’s gas imports through pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan, Norway, and North Africa (Algeria and Libya), as well as LNG cargoes from global players like the US, Qatar, and Nigeria. The tracker aims to highlight changes in the EU’s imported gas supplies and the extent of reducing dependency on Russia.

Gas shipments from Russian energy giant Gazprom to Europe (EU and Ukraine) decreased by 5.8% month-on-month (m/m) in January, but jumped 35.5% year-on-year (y/y) reaching 2,436 million cubic meters (mcm), up from 1,800 mcm for the same period  last year (Figure 1), according to the EOA’s calculations that are based on data from the European gas transmission platform (ENTSOG).

Gazprom shipped 1,266 mcm of gas through the Sudja gas station on the Russian-Ukrainian border, out of which 44 mcm of gas was offloaded in Ukraine, while the remaining volume of 1,222 mcm was shipped to the EU member states. Although Gazprom’s daily gas exports through the Sudja metering point slightly dropped to 40.8 mcm in January, down from 41.1mcm the previous month, they were notably higher than shipments recorded in January last year, the EOA calculated.

Meanwhile, the total gas flows Gazprom shipped via the TurkStream pipeline passing through Turkey dropped to 1,170 mcm in January, down from 1,270 mcm the previous month, a drop of 8.5% m/m. However, this figure is significantly higher than that recorded for January 2023 when total shipments reached 776 mcm. Using the two transit routes, Gazprom gas shipments to the EU member states dropped by 6.4% m/m in January, reaching 2,392 mcm, as shown in Figure (2) below, down from 2,556 mcm in December.

The importance of Turkey as a transit route for Russian gas to Europe is becoming increasingly evident, and this shift comes at the expense of Ukraine, which had played this role for many decades before Moscow's invasion. In the previous year, Russia's pipeline gas exports to Europe experienced a significant decline of 55% compared to 2022, amounting to 27.3 billion cubic meters (bcm), down from 62 bcm the previous year. This marks the lowest annual figure for Gazprom's gas exports to Europe in decades, representing only 20% of its gas exports to Europe in 2021, and prior to the invasion of Ukraine, our data shows.