Russia’s liquefied natural gas cargoes could be redirected to Turkey and Asia if the European Union makes a plan to ban Russian LNG official, Patrick Pouyanne, the chief executive of French oil and gas supermajor TotalEnergies, says.
TotalEnergies is doing business with Russia – it has a 20% stake in the Novatek-led Yamal LNG export project, which is not under any Western sanctions. The French company has a long-term contract to lift cargoes from Yamal.
Of the 5 million tons of LNG from Yamal to which TotalEnergies is entitled under contracts, 2 million tons currently go to Europe, another 2 million tons to Asia, and 1 million tons of supplies are not destination-bound, Pouyanne said on the company’s investor day in New York.
In the first comment from an oil major about the proposed EU ban on LNG imports, Pouyanne suggested the company could send the LNG “somewhere else than Europe, maybe to Turkey, to India”, noting that “Turkey is not far from Europe, it’s not in the EU”.
As the United States is pressuring Europe to cut off energy revenues for Russia, the European Union took a step to bring forward a ban on imports of Russian LNG a year earlier than planned.
Earlier this month, the European Commission proposed its 19th sanctions package against Russia over its war in Ukraine. This package, which will need unanimous approval from all EU member states, accelerates the timeline for phasing out Russian LNG imports into the bloc—from the end of 2027 to January 1, 2027, one year earlier than planned.
“We are waiting to see what political leaders will do,” Pouyanne told investors. “The last draft we’ve seen it was not sanction, it was more banning.”
If Yamal LNG is sanctioned, TotalEnergies will have to declare force majeure and stop deliveries from the project, the executive said. But if it’s a ban on EU imports, cargoes could be diverted, he added.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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