Page 112 - RusRPTOct23

the beginning of the war - by 34%: last year, tariffs were indexed twice - by 3% in July and by 8.5% in December. No indexation was carried out in 2023.
Never in recent years have gas prices grown so rapidly: in 2021 the indexation was 3%, in 2020 - 3%, in 2019 - 1.4%, in 2018 - 3.4%, in 2017 - m - 3.9%, and in 2015 and 2016 - 7.5% each.
The last sharp increase in gas tariffs - by 15% per year - took place in 2013. But now authorities are returning to increasing the burden on consumers amid a sharp deterioration in Gazprom's financial position.
Last year, the company sold abroad the minimum volume of gas since the last years of the USSR (100bn cubic meters), and in 2023, gas exports from Russia to Europe fell to a minimum since the second half of the 1970s - 12.1bn cubic meters in the first half of the year .
In the second half of 2022, when almost all European countries were successively cut off from Russian gas, Gazprom suffered a net loss of 1.3 trillion rubles. In 2023, the company managed to achieve a profit, which, however, turned out to be 5 times less than last year - 296bn rubles. Cash reserves in Gazprom’s accounts have decreased threefold since the beginning of the war: from a “cash cushion” of 2 trillion rubles by the beginning of July 2023, there remained just under 700bn.
Plans agreed last year by Azerbaijan and the European Union for Baku to double the volume of gas it sends to Europe to 20bn cubic metres a year are on hold as European gas buyers have yet to confirm they'll take the gas, Eursianet reports.
Gazprom gas production decreased by 25% y/y to 179.45bn cubic meters
in the first half of 2023, the company’s report said on September 28. The company's production of natural and associated gas in the first half of last year amounted to 238.46bn cubic meters. The company attributes the decrease in gas production to the adoption of politically motivated decisions in a number of countries aimed at refusing to import Russian gas. Oil and gas condensate production in the first half of the year increased by 8.8%, to 36.31mn tonnes. According to the report, in the first half of 2023, Gazprom supplied 166bn cubic meters to the domestic and foreign markets, which is 26.5% down y/y. In the first half of 2022, supplies totaled to 225.7bn cubic meters.
Speaking to reporters at a round table meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara on September 14, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar confirmed that his ministry had instructed the operator of the TANAP pipeline which carries Azeri gas across Turkey to Greece, to prepare to expand the pipeline to its full 31bn cubic metres a year capacity, in order to carry the extra 10bn cubic metres a year.
112 RUSSIA Country Report October 2023 www.intellinews.com