Russia supplied Europe with 17 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) last year, an increase of around 20% compared to the volumes delivered in 2021, which partially offset the decline in Russian natural gas exports through pipelines, ishows the data published on Tuesday by the Refinitiv Eikon platform, Reuters reports.

Last year, Europe significantly increased its imports of liquefied gas (gas transported by sea in liquid form after being cooled to a temperature of minus 160 degrees Celsius), in the context of decreasing imports of Russian natural gas delivered through pipelines, as following the serious political crisis caused by the invasion of Ukraine.

In 2022, Russian natural gas exports via pipelines to Europe hit their lowest level since the collapse of the USSR, as Russia’s most important customer reduced its imports due to the war in Ukraine and a major gas pipeline Russian natural resources were affected by a series of unknown explosions, according to Agerpres.

In parallel, however, Russia increased its total liquefied gas exports by 8.6% in 2022, to about 33 million tons (about 45 billion cubic meters), of which more than half were delivered Europe, Refinitiv Eikon data show.

Russia’s largest LNG producer, Novatek, was responsible for most of Russia’s LNG exports, delivering 20.8 million tonnes of LNG from the Yamal project in arctic area and another 700,000 tons of LNG from the Kriogaz-Vysotsk project in the Baltic Sea.

For its part, the Sakhalin-2 project, developed by a Gazprom-led consortium on the Pacific coast, increased its liquefied gas supplies by 11% in 2022, up to 11.2 million tons.