Gazprom confirms in their annual report that total production in 2023 reached just 359bcm, the lowest by far this century (data from their annual reports only available back to 1999), and probably one of the lowest figures for many decades. This is despite the fact that Russian gas demand as a whole grew by quite a strong 1.8% on the year to 495.6bcm (according to gazprom), mostly driven by a colder Q4.
With 215.2bcm supplied from its GTS system to domestic consumers, Gazprom had just a 57% market share in Russia, and this figure was down 23bcm from its peak in 2021.
The report makes clear that Gazprom’s short and medium term goals are to continue increasing sales to China and central Asia, as well as to diversify export routes and the production of LNG in pursuit of this. Gazprom even mentions the de-commissioning of excess capacities in its GTS that are no longer necessary, likely in light of the far lower sales volumes to Europe which have made some of its huge pipelines running from Yamal-Nenets and Nadim-pur-Taz rather redundant.
Source: Brendan A’Hearn
