Madrid continues to increase its imported Russian gas

It is believed that Spain is now Russia’s second-largest importer of natural gas, only behind China.

According to reports and sources from Moscow, Russia, and Spain are continuing to increase their imports of natural gas from the controversial country, despite their continued invasion and occupancy in war-torn Ukraine.

It’s believed that Madrid, Spain’s capital city, are continuing to rely heavily on natural gas from Russia and people in Moscow are confident of this relationship continuing for a prolonged period of time as it makes no economic sense for the EU nation to cut ties any time soon.

A lot of the world looked to cut ties with Russia and tried to eliminate how much they relied on the country’s ability to produce natural gas when they invaded Ukraine, and this is largely what drove up prices of essential items.

Russia expect to keep working with Spain

The Russian Ambassador to Spain, Yury Klimenko, has been speaking in an interview about the long-term contract between the countries which sees them provide the EU nation with natural gas for a long period of time despite everything that’s going on in the world.

He said: “Despite the Spanish authorities’ calls to gradually reduce purchases of our energy resources and to stop buying them in the future, Madrid continues to increase its imports of Russian gas.

“Thus, 53,200 GWh of our LNG were exported [to Spain] in January-August 2023, which is 38.5% more than over the same period in 2022 (32,700 GWh).

“As a result, Russia is now securely in third place on the list of key suppliers, accounting for 19.7% of the total imports vs 8.9% in 2021, while Spain has become the major buyer of Russian LNG in Europe.

Madrid very reliant on natural gas

“It makes no economic sense for Madrid to terminate the existing major long-term contract.”

This interview can be taken as both a positive and negative for Spain. It could be a great thing because Russia appear very happy to keep supplying Spain with all the natural gas that they require, as long as payments are right and on time.

However, the darker and more negative side of this is that Spain appears to be stuck in this deal with Russia as they’re heavily relying on them for natural gas – much like other countries are around the world – and can’t cut ties without hurting themselves economically.

It remains to be seen if Spain will make any changes to how they do business after the latest EU summit held in their own country, but what is clear is that Spain needs Russia and the Vladimir Putin-led nation also needs them, so for now, it all looks likely to continue down this path.