BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 30. In the first four months of 2022, implied European gas consumption (production plus net imports and net storage withdrawals) totaled 185 Bcm, Trend reports with reference to Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES).
“This was a 24.5 Bcm (11.7 per cent) decrease on 2021 (209.5 Bcm), as high prices undoubtedly weighed on gas demand. Indeed, it was even lower than January-April 2020 (190.8 Bcm), which was impacted by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Breaking this implied consumption down by month, it can be seen that each of the first three months of 2022 were significantly lower than in previous years (2018-2021). It is only in April that the figure for 2022 was notably above that for 2020 (when April 2020 was markedly impacted by COVID-19) and slightly above the figure for April 2018,” OIES says in its latest report.
European production continued its decline, and only a small part of this decline is temporary: production in Denmark will rebound in mid-2023 when maintenance work at the Tyra offshore gas field is complete.
“However, the latest Danish forecasts are for gas production in 2024 and 2025 (the first full calendar years of restored production) to be 2.85 and 2.65 bcm, respectively.17 This is around one-third lower than production in 2018 (4.2 bcm), the last year before maintenance at Tyra began.18 Production in the Netherlands also continues its ongoing decline, mainly as a result of production ramping down at the Groningen gas field,” OIES experts note.
The report reveals that pipeline imports in January-April were down year-on-year, and this was primarily due to lower flows from Russia. Flows from Norway and North Africa have been robust, while flows from Azerbaijan have grown from around 0.2 bcm in January-April 2019 & 2020, due to the launch of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) in January 2021. By contrast, physical flows from Russia are down 30 per cent year-on-year.
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