The firm also said its first-half net profit fell to RUB296bn. from 2.5 trillion rubles. a year earlier.
“The decline in exports to Europe was partially offset by supplies to China, which continue to grow,” said Famil Sadigov, deputy director of Gazprom. He also pointed to the positive impact of activities in the oil industry.
Gazprom stopped publishing export data. Reuters estimates that the company’s shipments to Europe between January and July were about 15 billion cubic meters, compared with 62 billion cubic meters for the whole of last year.
Gazprom has the largest natural gas reserves in the world and has a monopoly on the export of this strategically important raw material from Russia through gas pipelines.
The situation with the supply of Russian gas to Europe became more complicated when Russia launched an attack on Ukraine last February, and the European Union adopted a series of anti-Russian sanctions in response.
Last year, among other things, Russia stopped the operation of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, through which Russian gas was supplied to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 1 can transport up to 167 million cubic meters of gas per day.