Russia's liquefied natural gas exports are near a record high, as the realities of a harsh winter eat away at countries' promises to curb their dependence on Moscow
- Russia's LNG exports rose 1.1% on-year to a record high of nearly 4.3 billion cubic meters in October.
- The EU is replacing piped Russian gas with imported LNG cargoes, which could pose a political risk.
Europe has vowed to wean itself off energy from Russia and aims to replace piped natural gas from the country with liquefied natural gas, or LNG. By doing this, it can hamstring Russia's energy coffers, as the war in Ukraine drags on.
There's just one problem — Moscow is also a major exporter of LNG, meaning the EU might end up replacing piped Russian gas with imported Russian LNG cargoes — the very thing it was hoping to avoid.
Exports of Russian LNG — the supercooled version of natural gas that can be transported by ships — rose 1.1% year-on-year to 4.3 billion cubic meters in October, marking their highest level since March, according to a Bloomberg compilation of ship-tracking data from 2016 onwards. Top importing countries were France, China, and Japan, according to Bloomberg's data.
Some of the supply likely made it to other EU countries, as European demand for natural gas typically surges as the bloc heads into winter.
In the first nine months of 2022, LNG shipments from Russia to the EU rose by 46% from a year ago to about about 16.5 billion cubic meters, Politico reported on Sunday, citing data from the Europe Commission.
This was in the aftermath of Russia slowing gas supply to the EU via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline, due to the war in Ukraine. This gas supply has ceased indefinitely after an 'unprecedented sabotage' of the pipelines that transport natural gas from Russia to Germany.
Admittedly, the imported LNG is only a fraction of the EU's piped gas imports, so the LNG is not serving as a total replacement. The EU imported 54.2 billion cubic meters of Russian piped gas in the first nine months of 2022 and 105.7 billion cubic meters in the same period of 2021, per Politico.
But the EU snapping up Russian LNG still still leaves it vulnerable potential political ramifications from the Russia-Ukraine war.
Russia could now use LNG as a weapon, canceling contracts should relationships with importing countries deteriorate, wrote Anne-Sophie Corbeau and Diego Rivera Rivota, researchers at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy on September 27.
"Continued dependency on Russian LNG comes with the risk of energy supplies being used as a political tool of blackmail in the current geopolitical environment," they added.