Russian gas continues to drive the European economy. The sanctions for the aggression against Ukraine have had widespread effects but the industry is so in need of gas that even while fighting, Russia has been supplying EU countries.
The liquefied gas that arrived in 2023, although excluded from sanctions, was the same as in 2022, monitored and requested by industries.
Evidently the effects of the aggression have raised fears of even greater consequences on GDP and production.
France, Spain and Belgium they have even increased interest in gas imports by sea. A concrete way of saying that the industry has its needs.
France absorbed 40% more, Spain and Belgium 50%. The data was released by Ieefa (Iinternational institute for economic and financial analysis) which controlled the imports authorized by Moscow.
The context remains complicated but those who believed that abandoning gas from Russian fields, via pipelines, would accelerate the transition to renewables must think again.
Europe on the other hand in 2023 also began to take the first shares of 30 billion cubic meters from the USA based on the agreement signed in 2022 by Joe Biden e Ursula von der Leyen. Fossil sources on the rise, in a nutshell.
This news does not please environmentalists and the Greens who before the summer were thinking about possible legal action against Russian companies that sold gas to European countries.
But anyway, industries continue to consume gas and have no medium-term possibility of doing without it.
Big industry is the protagonist
About 27% of imported LNG from Spain it came from Russia, Belgium took 37%, France 15%. In fact, the EU had to manage a complex transitional situation. If on the one hand it was committed to reducing dependence on Russia, on the other it had to respect the requests of large industry above all. Totally abolishing Moscow's supplies proved virtually impossible.
The new energy transition objectives for 2030 are also affected, so we need to wait at least mid-2024 to understand how much the demand for Russian gas by sea will drop. It being understood that there will always be the US one with less than exciting effects on the climate. War transition.
