Despite a German de facto ban on accepting LNG directly from Russia, Germany has been importing surging volumes of natural gas from France and Belgium where terminals continue to accept Russian LNG, according to a report by NGOs from Germany, Belgium, and Ukraine.
Germany’s state-controlled firm Securing Energy for Europe (Sefe), created in 2022 after Germany saved a former Gazprom unit it had expropriated, bought as many as 58 LNG cargoes from Russia via the Dunkirk terminal in France in 2024 alone, per the report cited in the Financial Times.
That’s over six times the LNG cargoes from Russia that Sefe bought through Dunkirk in 2023, according to the report by German environmental groups Deutsche Umwelthilfe and Urgewald, Ukrainian NGO Razom We Stand, and Belgian think tank Bond Beter Leefmilieu.
The figures highlight the impossibility of tracking the origin country of the natural gas that enters the EU pipeline network once LNG cargoes have been delivered.
The EU hasn’t banned imports of Russian LNG or pipeline gas, unlike oil and coal, but it has set a goal to ditch all Russian gas by 2027, to deprive Putin of revenues, and not be dependent on Russia for the fossil fuel ever again.
But the tracking of the gas once the LNG cargoes enter the EU pipeline network becomes impossible, which has also hampered efforts by some EU member states to push for a total ban on Russian LNG imports into the bloc. That’s apart from the EU’s need to import much more natural gas now that Russian pipeline supply is severely constrained.
“Once delivered into the European gas network, the molecules cannot be tracked, Germany’s Sefe told FT, commenting on the report of the NGOs.
“It is therefore impossible to know where exactly the gas that gets delivered in Dunkirk ends up.”
The EU has significantly boosted imports of Russian LNG in recent months.
The rising share of Russia’s LNG in EU supply comes as a concern for several EU member states that have been pushing for ways to curb Europe’s reliance on Russian LNG cargoes.
