According to the calculations of the Reuters news agency, Gazprom’s gas exports to Europe fell by 55.6 percent last year.
Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom is paying a heavy price for the war in Ukraine.
The gas giant’s profit for the whole of last year collapsed to a loss for the first time in more than 20 years, when the gas taps to Europe were closed due to sanctions and the company thus lost its most important foreign markets.
Gazprom’s net loss for 2023 was 629 billion rubles, or just under 6.3 billion euros. Analysts had expected a net income of 447 billion rubles from the energy monopoly, reported the Russian state news agency Interfax.
In 2022, the company made a net profit of 1.23 trillion rubles.
According to the calculations of the Reuters news agency, Gazprom’s gas exports to Europe fell by 55.6 percent last year. The company stopped publishing its own export statistics after the beginning of 2023.
Gazprom has tried to find replacement customers to replace the European ones, but building new infrastructure is extremely expensive and takes time.
China and Russia have been negotiating for a long time about the construction of another gas pipeline between the two countries, but the parties have not reached an agreement on the giant project. Even if the project were to come to fruition, it would still not compensate for Gazprom’s losses in Europe, analysts say.
Sources: AFP, Reuters