Gazprom abandons effort to dominate European gas market

Gazprom's board of directors adopted a long-term development program for 2024-2033 and decided to exclude Europe from the company's strategic planning targets, reported the Russian information disclosure system.

"To instruct [...] to exclude from the strategic planning system of PJSC Gazprom the strategic target indicator of the first level of the gas business 'Share on the gas market of the countries of the European region'," says Gazprom's decision, which was not publicly announced.

During 2022-2023, Gazprom's share in the European market decreased significantly as a result of aggression against Ukraine – from 40% in 2021 to 9% in 2022.

Trying to blackmail Europe with gas, Russia stopped Nord Stream 1 from August 31, 2022, and a month later it was destroyed by an explosion in the Baltic Sea. One of the threads of Nord Stream-2 was also damaged. Russia was not allowed to launch it because of aggression.

Since May 2022, Ukraine has stopped the transit of gas through the Sokhranivka gas metering station due to the Russian occupation of the northern part of Luhansk region, and Russia refuses to transfer these volumes to the Sudzha gas station.

At the same time, Russia itself refused to transit gas through Poland through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

All together, this led to the fact that the export of Russian gas to Europe collapsed to the lowest levels, which were last recorded in the times of the USSR.

In 2022, Equinor became the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe, taking the lead from Russia's Gazprom.

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