Pipeline to increase gas market in EU

A NEW pipeline from Russia’s Arctic fields to Germany will boost Moscow’s share of the European gas market despite competition from Qatar and the US, and will also mean much less fuel goes via Ukraine, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said. Chief executive Alexei Miller said supplies via Ukraine would fall after 2020, but not stop entirely as Moscow has previously threatened, when the world’s largest gas firm opens a pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Gazprom’s Western partners agreed on Monday to provide half the financing for the €9.5 billion (R135.3bn) Nord Stream 2 pipeline, removing a big hurdle for a Russian plan to pump more gas to Europe from 2019. Gazprom now supplies a third of Europe’s gas needs, with its share rising from a quarter in the past two decades. It believes it could ship more despite the EU’s fears that the bloc is becoming too reliant on Russian energy. “Today, in 2017, we are beating our 2016 record highs by around 10 percent. So we can expect new records this year and Gazprom’s European market share is poised to rise,” said Miller, one of the closest and longestserving allies of President Vladimir Putin, speaking in a telephone interview. Gazprom sold a record 179 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to Europe in 2016, helped by a collapse in oil prices on which gas is priced and the cold weather on the continent. Customers are requesting more gas this year and Gazprom believes in the next 15 years it can provide the bulk of an additional 100 bcm a year for Europe, which the continent needs by 2035, as domestic output falls. “A decrease in the North Sea gas production, and other EU countries, is becoming a very important factor… Given that, Russia’s market share will be rising,” Miller said. The EU has sought to reduce reliance on Russia. – Reuters