Russia has not nominated any gas flows from January 1 through the Ukrainian pipeline to Europe as of Tuesday, Ukraine’s gas transit operator said, according to a Reuters report.
The development comes ahead of the expiration of a five-year contract between Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz.
Ukraine continued to transit Russian natural gas to Europe through pipelines despite being at war against Russia since early 2022. The deal between the two countries was signed in 2019.
Ukraine to not renew transit deal
Ukraine had recently said that it will not renew the deal to transit Russian gas to Europe after it expires on December 31. This is due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
According to Reuters, 2025 could be the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that no gas would be transited via Ukraine from Russia to Europe.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the western powers such as the UK and US had imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow’s energy exports.
Russia used to make up nearly half of the European Union’s total gas imports before the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv started in 2022.
Export volumes
Russia exported a total of 63.8 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe via various routes in 2022, according to Gazprom data and Reuters calculations.
This volume declined to just 28.3 bcm in 2023, according to the report. Reuters said that this volume could be even smaller around 14 bcm in 2014.
In 2018-2019, annual flows to the European Union was around 175 bcm to 180 bcm, sharply higher than the current levels.
According to Reuters, Ukraine used to receive billions of dollars every year for transiting gas from Russia to Europe before the war.
This year, the payments to Ukraine dropped to about $800 million due to a significant reduction in volumes.
Overall, the share of Ukrainian transit in EU gas imports has dropped from 11% in 2021 to about 5%, according to Bruegel, a global think-tank agency.
The EU has a non-binding goal of stopping all Russian energy imports by 2027.
The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline transits gas from western Siberia through the Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region. The gas then flows through Ukraine to Slovakia.
In Slovakia, the pipeline is divided into two branches from the Czech Republic and the other to Austria. Hungary, Slovakia and Austria are the major buyers of this gas.
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