MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. The blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and the EU’s move to abandon Russian gas led Moscow to diversify export flows to other, more promising markets, President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the Russian Energy Week.
"One would think that the move by some European countries to abandon Russian gas and the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines has cut us off from traditional markets and delivered a blow to an important sector of our energy industry. It must be admitted that our gas export did decline at first but then, it began to rise again. It hasn’t fully recovered yet but it has clearly grown," the head of state noted.
"The European Union’s demarche only accelerated a shift in the trajectory of our exports in favor of more promising and responsible buyers - the countries who know where their interests lie and act reasonably based on those very national interests," Putin emphasized.
He pointed out that supply chains on the global gas market were also changing for objective reasons. "Gas consumption is steadily growing in the Asia-Pacific Region, the Middle East and Latin America, while in Europe, gas demand remains under the 2019 level. But why is demand for a primary energy source lower than it used to be? Because industrial production is declining, and there is no need for such amounts of gas, that’s why," the Russian leader explained.