Russia’s Gazprom Boosts 2024 Investments to $16.9 Billion

Gazprom is raising its investment plan for 2024 by 4% to $16.9 billion (1.642 trillion Russian rubles), thanks to rising exports and domestic supply, the Russian gas giant said after approving its new financial plan for the year.

Previously, Gazprom was targeting investments of a total of $16.5 billion (1.574 trillion rubles) for 2024.

The Russian company continues to develop key projects, including such aimed at boosting natural gas supply to China, Famil Sadygov, Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee at Gazprom, said in a statement carried by Russian news agency TASS.

Gazprom still exports natural gas via pipelines to Europe, via a link crossing Ukraine, and through the TurkStream pipeline. The customers are several countries in central Europe.

Russia has seen its gas exports to Europe significantly reduced since the invasion of Ukraine. The major drop in Gazprom’s gas deliveries was due to the halt of Russian pipeline gas exports to nearly all European countries.

Weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Russia cut off supply to Poland, Bulgaria, and Finland.

Then Gazprom started to reduce supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany in June 2022, claiming an inability to service gas turbine maintenance outside Russia due to the Western sanctions against Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine. This was weeks before the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines at the end of September 2022, which definitively closed all pipeline gas routes of Russia’s gas to Germany.

Before the war in Ukraine, Russia supplied around one-third of all the gas to Europe.

With most of European markets now closed, Russia appears to be struggling to convince China to take on more pipeline gas. Beijing is not committing to a massive new pipeline project to import Russian pipeline gas unless it’s favorable for the world’s second-largest economy.

But Gazprom is pressing on and is accelerating its natural gas exports to China through the existing Power of Siberia pipeline, aiming to hit maximum capacity by the end of 2024—a full year ahead of schedule.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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