China has overtaken European countries to become the largest consumer of Russian gas: Bloomberg
China overtook European countries and became the largest importer of Russian pipeline gas in the period January-September 2024, informs Bloomberg based on own calculations.
During this period, Gazprom delivered 23.7 billion cubic meters of gas to China, which is 40% more compared to the same period in 2023. For comparison, 22.5 billion cubic meters of gas were exported to Europe.
Gas is supplied to China through the Power of Siberia pipeline, launched at the end of 2019, which has a design capacity of 38 billion cubic meters per year. Last month, Gazprom signed an agreement with the Chinese oil and gas company China National Petroleum Corp for additional gas supplies in December.
Also, “Gazprom” plans to increase supplies to China by another 10 billion cubic meters due to the Far Eastern route, which is planned to be put into operation in 2027. However, as Bloomberg points out, this volume is still significantly less than what Russia used to supply to Europe.
For comparison, in 2022, Russia exported 61.3 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe. The European Commission reported that EU countries imported only 43 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas from Russia in 2023, which is 75% less than in 2021 (150 billion cubic meters).
