In May, Russia surpassed the US as Europe’s gas supplier.

In May, Europe’s imports of Russian gas overtook those from the US. This was the first time since almost two years that the US had surpassed the European region in terms of its fossil fuel consumption.

The reversal was due to one-off reasons, but it also highlights the difficulties of reducing Europe’s dependency on Russian gas, as several countries in eastern Europe still import from their neighbor.

Tom Marzec Manser, ICIS’s head of gas analysis, said: “It is striking that the market share for Russian gas [and] liquefied natural gases has increased in Europe, after all of the work we have done to decouple energy supply and reduce risk.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine on a large scale in February 2022 Moscow cut its gas pipeline supplies to Europe. The region increased imports of LNG which are shipped by specialised vessels.

In September 2022, the US surpassed Russia as Europe’s gas supplier. Since 2023, it has accounted for a fifth or more of that region’s supply.

According to ICIS data, last month Russian LNG and gas shipments made up 15 percent of the total supply to EU, UK and Switzerland.

ICIS data shows that LNG imports from the US accounted for 14 percent of the total supply in the region. This is the lowest since August 2022.

The reverse comes amid a overall increase of European LNG imports despite the efforts of several EU countries to impose sanctions against them.

By mid-2022, Russia will no longer send gas to Europe via the pipelines that connect it to the north-west. However, supplies through Ukraine and Turkey are still available.

In May, flows were affected by a number of one-time events, such as an outage in a US LNG export terminal, and Russia sent more gas to Turkey in advance of scheduled maintenance in June. The demand for gas in Europe is also relatively low, and storage levels are near records for this time of the year.

Marzec Manser, of ICIS said that the reversal “is not likely to last” as Russia will be able to send LNG to Asia in the summer via its Northern Sea Route. This would likely reduce the amount of LNG sent to Europe while US production has increased again, said Marzec-Manser.

He added that “Russia’s flexibility is limited to maintain this share in Europe as the demand for gas increases into the winter of next year, while the overall US LNG production continues to grow with new capacity arriving on the global market at the end the year.”

This year also the transit agreement between Ukraine & Russia ends , putting in danger flows along this route.

The European Commission supports efforts to establish an Investment Plan to increase the capacity of the pipelines in Southern Gas Corridor, between EU and Azerbaijan.

The EU’s senior official stated that the current supply of Russian gas through Ukraine is not enough to replace the 14bn cubic metres of Russian natural gas flowing through Ukraine into the EU every year.

On a recent trip to Japan, EU energy commissioner Kadri SIMSON said that she was concerned about LNG being diverted to Asia to meet the demand.

She said Tokyo, Brussels and Brussels have established an early warning system to monitor LNG shortages. Both parties agreed that both should pursue measures for energy savings.

She added that “the EU is ready to buffer any negative events on global gas markets,” including supply or demand. “Our gas inventory remains at record levels. Our gas demand has stabilised to record low levels. Down 20 per cent from 2021.