BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 11. EU gas consumption in the first quarter of 2022 fell by 8.2 percent (-11.6 bcm) in year-on-year comparison, after practically stagnating in Q4 2021 (+0.6 percent) and a significant fall in Q3 2021 (-10 percent), Trend reports with reference to the European Commission.
“In absolute numbers, the quarterly gas consumption in Q1 2022 amounted to an estimated 130 bcm, down from 141.6 bcm in Q1 2021, but up from 1214 bcm in Q4 2021, as gas consumption rose at the height of the heating season. Even if gas use in power generation was up by 4 percent (+5.5 TWh) year-on-year, other factors pointed to decrease in gas demand in Q1 2022. High wholesale gas prices must also have had negative impact on gas demand in energy intensive industries, leading to reduction in production, which could also be observed in the previous quarter. In January and February 2022 the weather in Europe was milder than usual, reducing heating related gas demand. In the first quarter (specifically in January and February of 2022) gas consumption in the EU was close to the lower end of the range of the last five years,” reads the report released by the EU Commission.
The report reveals that in the first quarter of 2022, gas consumption increased only in 7 EU Member States year-on-year, whereas in the other 19 countries (there is no data for Cyprus) it decreased. Gas consumption, in the order of percentage changes, rose by the most in Slovakia, by 29% (+0.5 bcm), in Spain, by 10 percent (+0.9 bcm), and in Greece, by 6 percent (+0.1 bcm), whereas it fell the most in Finland, by 57 percent, (-0.6 bcm), and in Latvia and Lithuania, both by 33% (respectively by -0.2 bcm and -0.3 bcm). Among the five biggest gas consumer countries, consumption fell by in the Netherlands by 25 percent (-3.9 bcm), in Germany by 9 percent (-3.1 bcm) and in France by 6 percent (-0.9 bcm), whereas it rose in Spain by 10% (+0.9 bcm) and in Italy by 0.4 percent (+0.1 bcm). In twelve Member States, year-on-year changes were less than 10 percent (increase or decrease). In Q1 2022, Germany consumed the highest amount of gas (31.4 bcm), followed by Italy (25.2 bcm), France (14.4 bcm), Spain (9.8 bcm) and Poland (5.8 bcm).