EU Significantly Reduces Imports of Russian Oil and Gas

In the first quarter of 2023, the EU member states managed to significantly reduce the supply of oil and gas from the Russian Federation. 

This is evidenced by data published by Eurostat

According to Eurostat, in recent years, the European Union has seen an intensive increase in the volume of Russian oil and gas purchases. However, today, this trend has changed.

"Between 2021 and 2022, there was a significant increase in energy imports to the EU, both in terms of monthly average value (+121%) and quantity (+9%). However, in the first quarter of 2023, both indicators declined. Compared to the first quarter of 2022, the value decrease was -9.2%, and the quantity decrease was -3%," the report said.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, EU member states agreed to impose sanctions against the aggressor. The restrictions were supposed to reduce the Kremlin's revenues from oil and gas sales. Russia responded by using energy blackmail. This caused a crisis in the European energy market and record fluctuations in energy prices.

The European Union did not ease the sanctions pressure, but was forced to take unprecedented measures to stabilise energy security. These included restrictions for businesses and ordinary citizens.

As a result, starting in the second quarter of 2022, Russia's share of imports of coal, gas, and petroleum products to the EU began to decline.

On 5 December 2022, the EU's ban on imports of Russian crude oil by sea came into force, and in February 2023, an embargo on imports of petroleum products came into effect.

While in early 2022, Russia was the largest supplier of petroleum products to the EU with a share of 26.0%, in early 2023 this percentage decreased by 3.2 percentage points.

At the same time, the share of imports from Norway increased by 3.8 percentage points, from Saudi Arabia by 3.4, and from the United States by 2.7.

A similar trend is evident in the natural gas market.

In the first quarter of 2022, Russia was the largest supplier of natural gas to the EU. The share of Russian imports in the EU market was 38.8%. Exactly a year later, Russia's share fell by 21.4 percentage points. Norway became the leader in oil supplies to the EU. The shares of Algeria and the United Kingdom also increased by 7.4 and 4 percentage points, respectively.

Previously, Russia was also the second largest supplier of liquefied natural gas to the EU market. In the first quarter of 2023, its share decreased by 4.9 percentage points.

In May this year, European Commission spokesperson Tim McPhie announced that the EU had become independent of Russian energy.

As a reminder, Hungary is planning to ask the European Union to extend for another year the EU sanctions relief that allows the Slovak oil refinery Slovnaft to continue exporting products made from Russian oil to the Czech Republic. The refinery receives oil from the northern branch of the Russian Druzhba pipeline.