In its internal plan for 2025, Russian state gas giant Gazprom assumes that gas will no longer flow into Europe through Ukraine after December 31.
Reuters writes about this, citing a source familiar with the plans.
Kyiv has said it wants to terminate the transit agreement, which would end more than half a century of gas flows from Siberia to central European markets that began during Soviet times and were a constant source of revenue for the Russian budget.
While Ukraine has stated that it will not consider extending the transit agreement, which generates up to $1 billion. in the year of transit fees for Kyiv, Moscow signaled that it was open to negotiations and continued flows along this route.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is ready to continue transporting gas through Ukraine.
Russia, which was Europe’s first supplier of natural gas before the war in Ukraine, has lost almost all of its European customers as the European Union tries to move away from Russian energy and after the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany was blown up in 2022.
According to an interlocutor familiar with Gazprom’s plans, which still need to be approved by the empire’s top leadership, Russia’s base scenario is that there will be no gas transit through Ukraine next year. The person spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
The source said Russian gas exports to the “far abroad” – Gazprom’s term for Europe and Turkey, excluding former Soviet countries – are expected to fall by a fifth in 2025 to just under 39 billion cubic meters from more than 49 billion cubic meters. which are expected this year.
This covers supplies to Turkey via the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream pipelines and excludes exports to China, which are expected to reach 38 billion cubic meters next year via the Power of Siberia pipeline.
Russian gas exports to Turkey are unlikely to collapse.
Gazprom did not respond to a request for comment.
Since the discovery of large Siberian gas fields after World War II, Soviet and post-Soviet leaders have spent half a century developing an energy business that linked the Soviet Union, and then Russia, to the economies of Europe.
War and explosions have all but destroyed that link, crippling the economies of both Russia and Europe, which are now much more dependent on US gas supplies.
Russian gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine are already relatively small. In 2023, Russia supplied about 15 billion cubic meters of gas through Ukraine – only 8% of peak Russian gas flows to Europe along various routes in 2018-2019.
The Soviet-era Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline delivers gas from Siberia through the town of Sudzha, now under Ukrainian military control, in Russia’s Kursk region. Then it flows through Ukraine to Slovakia.
In 2023, about 14.65 billion cubic meters of gas were supplied through Sudzha, or about half of Russian gas exports to Europe. In 2023, gas consumption in the EU fell to 295 billion cubic meters.
Source: Racurs
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