Shipping brokerage Banchero Costa said in its latest weekly market report to Xinde Maritime that the EU's total LNG imports from Russia in the first quarter of this year soared by 50% year-on-year.
It is for this reason that the EU became the world's largest importer of LNG in the first quarter of 2022.
Europe frantically imported LNG in the first quarter
The latest data provided by Banchero Costa for Xinde Maritime Network shows that in 2021, the European Union (27 countries) is the world's third largest importer of seaborne LNG, accounting for 15.8% of global seaborne LNG imports
In 2021, China will be the world's largest LNG importer with a share of 20.2%, followed by Japan with 19.7%.
Earlier in 2020, the EU imported 62.8 million tonnes of LNG, down 4.2% from 2019.
In 2021, EU LNG imports will actually decrease further, to only 58.5 million tons, a further 6.8% drop from 2020.
But the turning point came so suddenly. In the first quarter of this year, with the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, dramatic changes took place.
In the first three months of 2022 (the first quarter of this year), the EU imported 22.1 million tons of LNG by sea, a jump of 72.8% from 12.8 million tons in the first quarter of 2021. This made the EU become the world's largest LNG importer in the first quarter, with a share of 20.9%!
The United States and Russia are the main sources of increased European imports
The US is a major incremental contributor to European LNG imports, with the EU importing 10.4 million tonnes of LNG from the US in the first three months of 2022, an increase of 234.8% from 3.1 million tonnes in the first quarter of 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, U.S. gas accounted for 46.9% of European seaborne LNG imports.
In the first quarter of 2022, the EU imported 4.1 million tons of LNG from Russia, an increase of 49.1% from the 2.7 million tons in the first quarter of 2021. This is an all-time high. The EU has never imported more LNG from Russia than this year. In the first quarter of 2022, Russia accounted for 18.3% of EU seaborne LNG imports.
In fact, March 2022, when the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out, is also the highest month in history for Russian gas imports into the EU.
In March 2022, the EU imported 1.6 million tonnes of LNG from Russia, a 14.5% increase from February 2022 and a 34.3% increase from March 2021.
