Let’s Talk About Russia’s Other Gas Export Bonanza
The devil in the details is Russia’s ballooning LNG trade, with Europe still buying.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during an event to mark the anniversary of Russia's statehood. Photographer: Ilya Pitalev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images.
Looking southeast from the Acropolis of Athens, the silhouette of the tanker Pskov barely stood up last week against the azure waters of the Aegean Sea. Inside her navy blue hull, almost 300 meters long, a hidden treasure: a shipment of liquefied natural gas.
Europe is thirsty for LNG after Russia shut down most of its pipeline gas sales to the continent, turning energy into a weapon in its war against Ukraine and its Western allies. Dozens of LNG carriers like the Pskov are docking into Europe now, hauling friendly gas supplies from overseas to keep the lights on and the houses heated this winter.
But the Pskov didn’t sail to Greece from a Western ally, like Qatar. No; ironically, she sailed from Russia itself. And not from any unremarkable Russian LNG port. Instead, it was the maiden shipment from a new terminal that Moscow is using to sell some of the very same gas that only a few weeks ago it shipped to Germany. The new facility is located alongside the infamous Portovaya turbine pumping station on the now defunct Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
The Pskov — and her unlikely origin — is part of a much wider, and ballooning, trade that’s receiving very little attention despite its political and economic significance. Almost under the radar, Russia is still selling hundreds of millions of dollars in LNG cargos, mostly to the same nations that have imposed sanctions against Moscow.
It’s a powerful weapon in its arsenal of energy armament. Although better known for its vast pipeline gas exports, Russia is also the world’s fourth-largest LNG shipper, only trailing Qatar, Australia and the US, and ahead of others like Malaysia and Nigeria.
The LNG sales aren’t nearly as big as the gas pipeline exports once were, but remain a source of money. “The Kremlin seems to have scored a geopolitical win by keeping revenues from global LNG sales intact,” argues Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York.