"I would like to point out right away that 2022, of course, turned out to be very, very difficult."
These words were spoken by the boss of the Russian gas giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, on Wednesday during a press conference.
Marked by a major change in strategy, exports turning to Asia in the midst of a crisis between Moscow and the West, the firm experienced “radical changes in the energy markets”, explains the Russian oligarch.
The latter have been dragged down by the consequences of international sanctions against Moscow in retaliation for its military intervention in its Ukrainian neighbour.
Decline in gas exports
In 2021, Russia was, via Gazprom, the world's largest gas exporter and the European Union's largest gas supplier, but the 27 EU member countries have since greatly reduced their imports, to the tune of less than 10 % of all their gas imported, according to Brussels.
Over the whole of 2022, Gazprom, majority-owned by the Russian state, "extracted 412.6 billion cubic meters of gas", including just over 100 billion m3 intended for export, said Alexei Miller.
This is a lower level than in 2021.
In a press release published on December 1, Gazprom announced that it had extracted "376.9 billion m3 of gas" between January and November 2022, i.e. almost 20% less than in the same period of the previous year.
Exports to countries outside the CIS (the Commonwealth of Independent States, which brings together several countries of the former USSR) also fell by 44.5% compared to the same period in 2021, to 95.2 billion m3 .
Alexei Miller also welcomed on Wednesday the inauguration on December 21 of the Kovykta gas field, a vast field located in Siberia which should make it possible to significantly increase exports to China and mark the transition to the East of the Russian economy.
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