Russian Gas Exports To Europe Collapse To Lowest Since 1973

Compared to the peak, volumes have collapsed tenfold.

Gazprom's deliveries to Europe by the end of 2025 decreased by another 44% to 18 billion cubic meters. This is reported by Reuters, citing statistics from Turkish Stream, the last operating pipeline that brings Russian gas to European countries (translated by The Moscow Times.

The volume of pumping to what was once Gazprom's largest market has fallen to its lowest level since 1973: then, as part of the USSR's first contracts with Austria and Italy, Europe received 6.8 billion cubic meters from Siberian fields. By 1975, when the gas-for-pipes deal with Germany became operational, exports had risen to 19.3 billion cubic meters, to 54.8 billion by 1980, and to 110 billion cubic meters by the early 1990s.

The record for deliveries was set in 2018-19, when Gazprom pumped 170-180 billion cubic meters to European countries, or 80% of all gas sold to non-CIS countries. Since then, volumes have collapsed 10-fold. And the largest market for Gazprom is China, which buys raw materials at a discount of about 40% relatively - $248 per thousand cubic meters versus $401 for other gas customers of the Kremlin, according to the Russian Ministry of Economic Development. This year, according to Gazprom chief Alexei Miller, Beijing has acquired 38.8 billion cubic meters through the Power of Siberia pipeline.

Gazprom's total exports to far abroad, according to BCS estimates, will amount to 78 billion cubic meters - 3 billion less than a year earlier, but slightly better than the result of 2023 - the worst for Russia since 1985 (70 billion cubic meters).

Operating the world's largest gas reserves on the planet, in theory Gazprom could sell 500 billion cubic meters of gas abroad, estimates Vyacheslav Kulagin, head of the department of the world energy complex at the Institute of Energy Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, the Kremlin's desperate attempts to find markets for the gas have so far failed: a gas hub project in Turkey, announced with pomp, failed and was quietly shut down by Gazprom. Ankara remains Gazprom's second largest customer after China, but it refuses to sign new long-term contracts. The contracts expiring this year to supply 22 billion cubic meters annually, Turkey has only renewed for one year.

In September, Gazprom announced the signing of a legally binding memorandum to increase its pumping to China by 50 billion cubic meters a year, but the Chinese side never confirmed the project. According to Reuters, Vladimir Putin and Si Jinping are still unable to agree on the main thing - the price of gas, which China previously asked to be lowered to the domestic level, i.e. below $100 per thousand cubic meters.

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