The Russian economy (catch all)

[Ulenspiegel]

"European customers cut their demand by 15 billion cubic meters last year, or 8.5%, while sales to the former USSR (mostly Ukraine) fell by 19%, or over 10 bcm. It’s no exaggeration to say that they will prefer any alternative source of gas (except maybe the shale under their own feet) to Gazprom’s as long as economics will allow them to."

That is much too simple. Primary energy esp. NG demand is determined by weather in central Europe, around 45% of the German imports are used for room heating, 45% for industrial process heat and <10% for generation of electricity.

2014 was a very warm year, therefore, demand for heating fuels was low, first six months of 2015 were much colder and as a result NG consumption was higher (IIRC ~3%) than first six monts of last year.

The second aspect is that there is a huge excess capacity of coal fired power plants in Europe (as a result of the German energiewende and economic crisis), which provide cheap alternatives in the fields of electricty generation and CHP, NG lost around 30% of its share in the German electricity market after 2010. This happened without any changes of the German energy policy, the European picture is very similar.

At least in Germany we do not see a shift from Russian sources to others, instead a general reduction of demand and it is a save bet that this development will continue as new buildings have a much lower energy demand than older ones. The long term perspective is IMHO a 1% annual demand reduction.

On the plus side for Gazprom is the fact that domestic European production of NG is decreasing and LNG is more expensive than Russian NG delivered by pipelines.

[Firn]

I pretty much agree with your points, the main thrust of the post was the great fall of Gazprom which executives once talked about a trillion market value to a mere 1/15th of such ambitions...

It is important to keep some key facts in one's mind when discussing this topic:

1) European demand and Russian supply are natural matches dictated by geography. Commodities have gone west and technology and products east for similar reasons for hundreds of years.

2) When it comes to NG both sides are tied tightly together by pipelines and nearness as the product's global market is highly fragmented due to it's particular properties and existing infrastructure.


The paper "The Impact of Lower Gas and Oil Prices on Global Gas and LNG Markets" offers are global perspective on the said issues. Interestingly is the remark about Gazprom:

Through quantitative scenario analysis, the paper explores the major uncertainties in the global gas system connected by flexible LNG to 2030. The lack of clarity on Russia’s future preferred commercial behaviour however, adds a level of complexity most market participants would prefer to ignore. Gazprom is occupied on many fronts in both political and commercial spheres. At some point however the need to adopt a more market-oriented strategy is likely to rise on its list of priorities. While the timing of this is at present uncertain, the conclusions of this paper would strongly suggest that this is a development that players in the wider LNG-connected global system should be closely monitoring.

Personally I think the lower demand projections makes are more likely for Europe, maybe still a bit overestimated.

3) The liquid in LNG comes at a substantial price which makes it's import only attractive under special circumstances as extremely low (US) prices or ridiculous (Russian) behaviour. Asia seems right now considerably more attractive for US exports then Europe.

Putin's Gazprom must be quite careful not to push European costumers not too hard to avoid big incentives for various investments in infrastructure to handle LNG, store NG or better link the European pipelines.



Gross electricity generation by fuel, GWh, EU-28, 1990-2013.png

4) Coal and gas power dying out in Europe is a tad dramatic for my taste but investment is certainly increasingly flowing towards renewables. The energy demand for room heating should indeed slowly fall for various reasons. We discussed the role of energy consumotion in the energy security thread.



Derived heat generation by fuel, TJ, EU-28, 1990-2013.png

I will have to leave it there for today. Overall the picture is not bright for Gazprom and Russia but we won't see a drastic shift away from Russian fossil fuel supplies in particular if nothing stupid happens.