Since January 2021, Portugal has never received so much natural gas from Russia

The government argues that European sanctions do not cover natural gas

A year after the start of the war in Ukraine, 102,217 tons of natural gas entered Portugal from Russia, according to data from the General Directorate of Energy and Geology (DGEG) consulted by CNN Portugal. While Portugal has started negotiating natural gas imports with Russia in 2019, the figure has not been higher since January 2021.

The Ministry of Environment and Climate Action told CNN Portugal that “there is no limit to the origin of natural gas in European territory.” What’s true: The various sanctions packages already approved by the European Union continue to leave natural gas, one of Russia’s main sources of revenue, and continue to flow across Europe, even as dependence on the fossil fuel is reduced.

Import from a supplier

The government guarantees that natural gas imports from Russia are made through “a single supplier”. Express And this ECO Naturgy previously said it was the only company operating in Portugal to import fossil fuels from Russia.

Also, the company in Spain confirmed that it will continue to export Russian natural gas according to the contract that is in force until 2038 and this will appear in the annual report of the International Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL).

“Naturgy does two things: it fulfills its contracts and sees them through to the end,” Francisco Raines, the company’s managing director and president, said in a press conference held in February of this year. The company increased imports of liquefied natural gas by 55%, despite European efforts to reduce dependence on this fuel.

The GIIGNL report includes four Portuguese companies, four of which import natural gas. They are natural, but Kalb, EDP and Endesa. According to the document, an agreement signed in 2018 and due to expire in 2038 is the first of the agreements signed with Russia.

The agreement foresees the import of natural gas from the port of Sabeta at the terminal of Yamal in the Arctic Ocean, which can only receive this source of energy from the port of Portugal or Sines via Spain. In Portugal.

The government clarifies that “the supplier shall supply the National Gas System in quantities required for its consumer portfolio and other potential commercial liabilities.”

According to GIIGNL, Galp, EDP and Endesa buy natural gas from Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, Qatar or Nigeria, while natural gas from Spain and Algeria also comes to Portugal, via gas pipelines passing through Valencia and Campo Mayor. , and the construction of a third is planned, which will connect Portugal with Spain in the north of the country.

According to DGEG data, a total of 1,112,941 tons of natural gas arrived in Portugal this year, 10% of which came from Russia. Most (469,243 tons) came from the United States.

The Decisive “Carrot”

A year ago, the European Union began extending sanctions on Russian oil, a fuel that has hit many European countries that depend on it, especially in winter. Already at that time, Professor Francisco Pereira Coutinho, an expert on European politics, said that extending the ban on natural gas was “an essential carrot in the Russian economy.”

However, after that time, many countries order natural gas from Moscow. According to Latest data For the period from January to November 2022, natural gas from Russia still represents 24.65% of the European Union’s consumption, a percentage equal to imports from Norway (24.9%) and a group of countries such as the United States. States, Qatar or Nigeria (25.7%).

Another point: step Natural Gas Market Report In the published EU in 2021, Russian natural gas will account for almost 40% of all consumption, and this percentage will reach 50% in 2020.

Sonia Seneca, a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations, understands that the European path must be taken in the spirit of “strategic autonomy”, and for that, stopping the purchase of natural gas from Russia is one of the essential measures. “It’s an important goal even from a security standpoint,” he notes, though he doesn’t believe natural gas will be included in the next set of sanctions.

“We know that Russia’s energy exploitation, which repeatedly uses this threat, is high. The continuation of this dependence could be a weakness for the EU,” notes Sonia Seneca. Buying natural gas for Moscow is, in a sense, financing Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

Even so, the researcher warns, Russia could face a potential embargo on its natural gas. “We are realizing that Russia has started to get used to economic sanctions. It has been able to avoid their impact, search for import markets and diversify,” Sonia Seneca underlines, even if it is from an energy security point of view, the Union EU should follow the path of abandoning fossil fuels from Moscow.

Is the EU breaking sanctions?

The EU has warned that “false practices” are emerging. There are oil tankers that manage to transport their products from Russia to Europe in one way or another.

For that reason, and according to PoliticsThe 11th round of sanctions applied to Moscow includes measures to block “loopholes” that have allowed the Kremlin to circumvent sanctions that bar Russian oil from entering the EU.

Given the “sharp increase in fraudulent practices” and “environmental risks” associated with the “clandestine” transport of Russian oil, Brussels considers new measures necessary to prevent “access by suspicious vessels”. .

These suspicions have already led to the opening of an investigation in Spain the world Madrid said it would buy refined oil, such as diesel, from Morocco, which recently began importing oil from Russia, and returned to selling fossil fuels to Spain for the first time since 2015.

Spain’s Minister of Environmental Change, Teresa Ribera, guaranteed that the government is trying to understand what happened because, if confirmed, such purchases would be against sanctions imposed by the European Union.