Page 12 - RusRPTJan23

There is still no official data on oil and gas production in November, in October the volume of oil and natural gas production in Russia decreased by 3.4% compared to October last year. The main share of the decline was in gas: natural gas production (excluding associated petroleum gas and LNG) decreased by 20.3% compared to October 2021.
2.3 Turkish gas hub idea will allow Russia to sell Europe gas indirectly
President Vladimir Putin’s plan to make Turkey a hub for Russian gas in theory could allow Moscow to mask its exports with fuel from other sources, but that might not be enough to persuade Europeans to buy, analysts and sources said.
Russia supplied 40% of the European Union gas market until Moscow on 24 February sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in what it calls a “special military operation”.
Russia’s exports to Europe have fallen by 43.4% this year and the TurkStream pipeline to Turkey is running well below its 31.5bcm (bcm) of annual capacity.
Zongqiang Luo, senior analyst at Rystad Energy, estimated about 60% of pipeline capacity was unusued following exports this year of about 10.6 bcm gas by 21 November.
Rystad’s Luo estimated it would take at least three to four years to build the costly new infrastructure needed.
A trading source in Europe said China, which overtook Japan to become the world’s top importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2021, is already re-selling Russian LNG, which has not been labelled as “made in Moscow”.
Turkey has said it would be also possible to include Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), which carries Azeri natural gas to the Turkish border, into the proposed hub.
With the Turkish gas hub proposal, Russia has returned to a long-standing idea to add two lines to the existing TurkStream pipeline to double its annual capacity to 63 bcm.
That corresponds exactly to the combined volumes Russia sold via various routes to Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey in 2020, according to Gazprom data.
Russia supplies pipeline gas to Europe mainly via Ukraine at a rate of over 40mn cubic metres per day, less than half the amount it used to sell to the European Union.
It also delivers gas to southern end eastern Europe, including Hungary, via the TurkStream.
12 RUSSIA Country Report January 2023 www.intellinews.com