In May 2024 Russia has overtaken the United States as Europe's main gas supplier, underscoring Europe's continued dependence on Russian energy, the Financial Times has revealed.
The leading business publication recalled that the US has become the largest supplier of gas to Europe since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but that in May 2024 supplies of Russian gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for Europe rose to 15% of total shipments, while the US provided 14%.
The FT did note, however, that the change in gas and LNG imports in May was partly the result of "one-off factors", such as an outage at a US LNG export plant and a planned increase in exports of Russian gas to make up for shortfalls due to line maintenance sometime in June.
The FT concluded that Russia is unlikely to maintain its lead in the coming months as it will be able to increase LNG supplies to Asia via the Northern Sea Route, reducing exports to Europe while LNG production in the US has stabilized after the recent single outage.
The FT previously reported on June 5 that Russian state gas company "Gazprom" has commissioned a report stating that it is unlikely to recover most of the gas sales to Europe that the Russian energy company has lost since 2022, stressing that Gazprom's business with Europe as overall is down significantly, regardless of this short-term reduction in US gas exports to Europe in May 2024.
Russia continues to rely on oil and gas revenues to support its wartime economy.
In 2023, it significantly increased its energy exports to China, possibly in part to offset the impact of losing the European market in 2022.