Russia’s single largest company, Gazprom, which accounts for over $1.6 trillion of the country gross domestic product, reported it had doubled its profits last year.
Gazprom reported a net profit of 1.456 trillion roubles ($23 billion) last year, slightly more than doubling last year’s profit of 714 million roubles. Its revenues rose to 8.22 trillion roubles from 6.55 trillion roubles.
The company also increased its European market share to a record high last year, meaning that 36.7 percent of Europe’s total gas consumption came from Russia. Natural gas sales to Europe account for 70 percent of Gazprom’s profits.
The company also announced that it’s working on alternatives to its main supply route via Ukraine, as the current transit deal with Ukraine will expire at the end of the year. It Wants to double the 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) capacity of its Nord Stream pipeline, though Denmark still has to give its accord for the stretch running in Danish territorial waters.
Gazprom is also filling up its storage capacities in Europe. Those capacities, however, are a mere 5 bcm compared with its annual exports of 200 bcm.
Gazprom exported 917 million cubic meters of gas to Romania last year, a 32 percent increase from 2017. Romania is one of the few European countries that is not dependent on Russian energy supplies: it has the fourth largest gas production and proven reserves after Norway, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and the third largest proven reserves of oil after the UK and Norway.
