Gazprom: Rising European Demand Needs Big Infrastructure Investment

Growing gas demand in Europe calls for big investment decisions in new fields and pipelines as early as today, Gazprom’s deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said at an event on Tuesday.

Speaking at the European Gas Conference 2017 in Vienna, Medvedev said that the Russian gas giant was ready to build a powerful infrastructure that would cost European taxpayers “not a single euro cent”, Reuters reports.

Medvedev quoted forecasts by energy agencies that Europe would need additional 90 bcm of gas by 2025, on top of the current supply, and more than 120 bcm by 2035.

While some European countries are trying to lessen their dependence on Gazprom and Russian gas, Gazprom is the largest exporter of gas to Europe, sending last year 12 percent more gas to Europe than it did in 2015.

With the Turkish Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, Gazprom would bypass Ukraine to bring Russian gas to Europe.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline – expected to come on line in 2019 – is expected to send 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Germany.

At today’s energy conference, Gazprom’s Medvedev said, as quoted by Reuters:

“The Nord Stream-2 project is being implemented in full compliance with the schedule. The Bovanenkovo-Ukhta-2 gas pipeline has been launched recently, this is a part of our Nord Stream-2 schedule.”

Gazprom’s Bovanenkovo-Ukhta 2 pipeline – launched last week – is planned to connect to trunklines carrying gas to Nord Stream 2.

Again last week, Gazprom reported a net profit for the first nine months of 2016 that was higher than its net profit for the same period of 2015, and said that gas exports had increased to 160.9 billion cubic meters in January-September 2016 from 125.3 billion cubic meters in January-September 2015. Gazprom’s gas sales to Germany hit a record high in 2016.

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