Source: Greek importers cut purchases of Russian gas over price

ATHENS, Oct 25 (PRIME) – Greece’s consumption of Russian natural gas has fallen as the consumers switch to cheaper liquefied natural gas (LNG), a Greek industry source told PRIME on Tuesday.

The Russian ambassador to Greece told Izvestia daily on October 20 that physical exports of Russian gas decreased by 10% in January–August, while in the monetary terms they jumped to 2 billion euros from 540 million euros in the same period of 2021.

“This is absolutely correct. This is one of the reasons why Russian gas shrunk here -- because it is contractually tied to the Dutch hub in its substantive part. LNG buyers are now dumping the price of LNG because of overbooked capacities,” the source said.

The source said that Greek power generating companies can now can buy some gas on the exchange, where there is excess of LNG.

But there are no problems with deliveries of Russian gas through the TurkStream pipeline, and all importers receive the gas in full, the source said.

“The only thing worthy of noting now is the difference between the contract price of Gazprom and the price for the gas regasified from LNG. Because of a large amount of incoming carriers and the TTF contraction, the price becomes lower than our purchase price from Gazprom,” the source said, adding that the situation is temporary.

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