Gazprom's LNG marketing and trading director Aleksey Polous offered assessments on the European energy market at the IndoPacific LNG Summit 2026 in Indonesia. Polous stated that claims that LNG is more reliable than pipeline gas in Europe do not reflect reality.
Recalling that Europe's dependence on Russian gas was criticized in the past, Polous stressed that today 60% of the continent's LNG imports come from the US. He noted that in Germany, this figure exceeds 90%.
Pointing to the impact of this US dominance in the European LNG market on prices, the Gazprom official said, "Natural gas prices have tripled compared to the period when significant volumes of Russian gas were shipped to the European market."
Polous noted that LNG shipments could be affected by disruptions at production facilities and transit risks in strategic straits such as Hormuz, Malacca, Bab el-Mandeb, and Panama. He added that Qatar has long been one of the leading suppliers in the global LNG market.
Before the Ukraine war, Gazprom was Europe's largest natural gas supplier, having increased its market share to 40% by 2022 through nearly 50 years of pipeline investments. After sanctions, the company lost customers to suppliers such as the US, Qatar, and Norway, and its shipments to Europe fell from 201.7 billion cubic meters in 2021 to approximately 18 billion cubic meters in 2025.