Qatar refuses to take sides in the Ukraine crisis. It is impossible to replace Russian gas on the European market, the Qatari energy minister says.
Replacing Russian natural gas on the European market is “not practically possible,” Qatari Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said in an interview with CNN on Thursday.
The official, who is also the president and CEO of state-owned QatarEnergy, noted that “from 30 to 40% of the total volume of gas supplied to the world market comes from Russia.”
The EU imposed economic sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, and announced it would move towards gradually slashing consumption of Russian natural gas this year. Over 40% of the EU’s gas imports come from Russia.
However, Al-Kaabi said Qatar would not impose sanctions on the Russian oil and gas sector, stressing that “energy should stay out of politics.” According to the minister, Qatar will not take sides in the Ukraine crisis, RT reports
DOHA/LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Neither Qatar nor any other single country has the capacity to replace Russian gas supplies to Europe with liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the event of disruption due to a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Qatar’s energy minister said on Tuesday.
With most of Qatari volumes are locked into long-term contracts mostly to Asian buyers, the amount of divertable volumes that can be shipped to Europe is only 10-15%, Saad al-Kaabi added.
Sources told Reuters that Qatari LNG exports have been lower over the past few days as two of its mega trains have been down, another factor that could limit the spare amount to be sent to Europe.
Japan said earlier this month it will divert some LNG cargoes to Europe after requests from the United States and the European Union. However, the few cargoes that arrived to Europe were cargoes already scheduled under a joint venuture between Japan’s JERA and France’s EDF and there was no incremental added supply. Currently facing a cold spell that has depleted LNG inventories, Japan is experiencing re-stocking demand and so it needs more LNG supply.
“We’ve not seen anything concrete happen to supply yet. That could obviously change, but clearly, Qatar and Japan will be limited in their ability to help with extra cargoes if Europe loses access to Russian gas,” said Robert Songer, LNG analyst at commodities intelligence firm ICIS.