European Union countries plan to import record volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia this year, despite the community’s desire to abandon Russian fossil fuels by 2027, the Financial Times reports, citing data from the international organization Global Witness.
According to its data, Belgium and Spain were the second and third largest buyers of Russian LNG after China in the first seven months of this year. Liquefied natural gas supplies from Russia to China in January-July increased year-on-year by 62.7% to 4.46 million tons. In value terms, energy imports from Russia during this period increased by 21.9%, exceeding $2.98 billion, informed the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China.
Overall, EU liquefied natural gas imports rose 40% between January and July this year compared to the same period in 2021, before Russia’s full-scale military operation in Ukraine, the newspaper said. Global Witness spokesman Jonathan Noronha-Gant called it “shocking that countries in the community, which had sought to abandon piped Russian gas at all costs, have replaced it with a supplied equivalent [LNG]”.
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