(ANSA) – ROME, JUNE 16 – Russia once again became Europe’s main gas supplier in May, overtaking the United States for the first time in two years. The Financial Times writes this, explaining that the reversal indicates the old continent’s difficulty in reducing its dependence on Russian gas, with several Eastern European countries still dependent on imports from Moscow. According to data from Icis (Independent commodity intelligence service), cited by the British newspaper, last month gas and LNG shipments from Russia represented, despite the sanctions, 15% of the total supply to the EU, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and North Macedonia.
In fact, Moscow still continues to guarantee supplies to Europe via the gas pipelines that cross Ukraine and Turkey. Liquefied gas from the United States instead stopped at 14% of the supply to the region, marking the lowest level since August 2022. According to Icis analysts, the situation should however only be contingent and not last long. May flows were indeed affected by several one-time factors, including an outage at a major US LNG export facility. Russia instead sent more gas through Turkey ahead of pipeline maintenance scheduled for June. (HANDLE). .
