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The business with Russian liquefied natural gas in the EU is booming and is constantly pouring new money into Putin’s war chest. It is a business that depends on a manageable number of special tankers. But sanctions are still not in sight.
The port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, late February. The “Christophe de Margerie” is docked at the LNG terminal and loaded with liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia. Not an unusual sight. Dem ARD-Politics magazine monitor There is data on the movements of Russian tankers that shows how and how often Russia heads to European ports.
The “Christophe de Margerie”, for example, regularly anchors in Zeebrugge, as do a total of 15 other tankers of the so-called Arc7 class. They are ice-breaking tankers that also bring LNG from Russia’s Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle to Europe in the winter months on behalf of the Novatek company.
One of its owners is the oligarch Gennady Timchenko, one of the richest men in Russia and a member of President Vladimir Putin’s exclusive circle. The EU has long imposed sanctions on him and confiscated his luxury yacht. But the LNG tankers continue to sail in and out of EU ports on his behalf. Each delivery has a minimum value of 30 million euros.
No sanctions so far
Although the EU recently passed the 13th sanctions package against Russia, gas deliveries have so far been excluded. The German federal government is also not calling for sanctions on gas deliveries; it is still arguing that there is a “tense supply situation”. Germany officially no longer receives Russian gas, but cannot rule out the possibility that smaller quantities will enter the country via detours via neighboring European countries.
Other EU states such as Hungary have already concluded new contracts with Moscow for additional gas deliveries. In France, the energy company Total is involved in LNG operations on Russia’s Yamal peninsula in northwest Siberia. Overall, gas imports through pipelines have been significantly reduced, but the LNG business continues unabated. The bottom line is that around 15 percent of the gas consumed in the EU still comes from Russia.
LNG is now almost as important to the Kremlin as the remaining revenue from pipeline deliveries. Experts currently estimate the volume of LNG transported to and across Europe to be worth around twelve billion euros annually. But Putin wants to triple the business in the next few years. The goal is to drive Europe into a renewed dependence on Russian gas, says Russian environmental activist Vladimir Slivjak. With his organization “Environmental Defense” he received the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2021 and had to leave Russia to avoid being imprisoned.
Europe as a transshipment point
But not only liquefied natural gas for the EU ends up in European LNG terminals such as Montoir-de-Bretagne, Bilbao or Zeebrugge. Their ports also serve as central transshipment points for the onward transport of Russian LNG all over the world. In Zeebrugge, for example, the LNG is either stored in gas storage facilities and re-exported or immediately reloaded onto other ships. This affects around half of the total gas volumes transported to Europe, the environmental organization “urgewald” has calculated based on ship data since 2022. The organization criticizes that Europe is not only creating additional climate burdens, but is also actively helping to finance the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
Without transshipment in EU ports, LNG trade would be significantly more difficult and expensive for Russia. If the EU were to ban reloading in the ports of the member states for the international market, the ships would have to travel as far as Turkey or Egypt, says energy expert Angelos Koutsis from the Belgian environmental organization “Bond Beter Leefmilieu”: “That not only costs a lot of money, “But it also takes much longer. This means that Russia can sell much less LNG from Yamal because there are no alternative transport options in the Arctic.”
It is possible to avoid Russian LNG
Energy expert Georg Zachmann from the Bruegel think tank is certain that Europe could now do without LNG imports from Russia. In Belgium, Russian liquefied gas currently accounts for eleven percent of total consumption, in France 13 percent and in Spain 25 percent. “There is now a good supply of LNG on the world market again,” says Zachmann. “Prices have fallen significantly, and if Russian LNG were no longer bought in Europe, ports with the same import infrastructure could import other LNG.”
The European Parliament is now also calling for tougher sanctions and a complete stop to Russian LNG. The Federal Ministry of Economics explains at the request of monitor, the EU is currently working on a regulation to allow member states to temporarily limit imports. The EU does not want to finally end the Russian gas business until 2027.
This comes far too late for Ulrike Malmendier, an economist. She demands “that the EU agree to stop the import of Russian gas. Let’s try it now and let’s try it together as the European Union. That’s exactly what the EU was created for.”
More on this and other topics in the Monitor program on March 7th, 2024 at 9:45 p.m. on Erste.