Report: Russia Becomes Europe's Second Largest LNG Supplier in 2024, Behind the US

In 2024, Europe bought a record amount of liquefied natural gas from Russia, despite the EU's efforts to abandon fossil fuels that finance Putin's military treasury.

This is reported by The Guardian with reference to a report by Rystad Energy.

According to published data, 17.8 million tonnes of Russian LNG were delivered to European ports in 2024. This is more than 2 million tonnes more than a year earlier. Thus, last year, Russia overtook Qatar to become the second-largest LNG supplier to Europe after the United States.

Jan-Erik Fenrich, gas analyst at Rystad Energy, noted that LNG flows are not only growing but are ‘at a record level’, with some LNG being resold to other countries.

Data from the Centre for Energy and Clean Air Research (Crea), which confirms Rystad's data, showed that Russian LNG imports to the EU in 2024 totalled €7.32 billion, or 17.5 million tonnes.

The Crea analyst believes that the reason for this is the low cost of Russian LNG. ‘In the absence of sanctions on this commodity, companies act in their own interests and buy more and more gas from the cheapest supplier,’ he said.

Since the outbreak of Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine, Europe has said it has cut its huge imports of Russian gas transported by pipeline. Despite this, it is increasingly buying LNG from a number of countries, including Russia.

The EU has previously declared that it aims to stop importing Russian fossil fuels by 2027. But the Union is in no hurry to ban gas, as it did with coal and oil. 

In June, EU member states agreed to ban the ‘transshipment’ of Russian LNG bound for non-EU countries from March 2025. The recent rise in Russian LNG imports may have been driven by attempts to ship volumes before the sanctions were imposed, according to Crea.