Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, issued an official comment on a looming no-confidence vote in Germany’s Bundestag. She said that Germany’s economic problems are the result of the big error of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government in rejecting Russian energy imports, which has led to German fuel prices spiking disastrously.
Official EU and independent data on automotive and natural gas fuel prices in Germany and elsewhere in the EU directly contradict Zakharova’s assertion that cheap Russian fuel is the key to European economic strength. Indeed, the data points toward the possibility she just made it up, Kyiv Post fact checks found.
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Zakharova, a key member of President Putin’s inner circle and the official public voice of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in a statement published on her Telegram channel at about 2 a.m. Moscow time on Friday, said the impending collapse of the ruling “traffic light” coalition in Germany was because top Berlin politicians had, in her view, cut Germany off from cheap Russian gas, thereby damaging Europe’s biggest economy.
Calling Germany, with the world’s third-biggest GDP, “a classic banana republic economy,” Zakharova said in part:
“What did you want? Berlin wasn’t able to deliver to its citizens and its industry life-critical supplies of Russian gas. They can’t maintain economic growth, and they are meekly watching the emigration of its industries and companies to the United States.”
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Kyiv Post fact checks focused on Zakharova’s claim that drastic reduction of Russian fuel deliveries to Germany and Europe spiked prices in those markets disastrously. The degree and possible causes of Germany or Europe’s economic slowdown have not been researched for this article.
Within the context of fuel pricing alone, however, published official and independent data point decisively to a situation almost diametrically opposite to Zakharova’s doomsday messaging.
In fact, German and European fuel prices have remained relatively stable as the continent has weaned itself from Russian fuel deliveries.
According to the market watch group Trading Economics, gasoline prices at German fuel pumps from November 2023-October 2024 were generally stable but trending mildly downwards, in the opposite direction Zakharova claimed.
According to that data, gasoline in Germany cost an average $1.97 a liter 12 months ago, and nationwide retail prices averaged $1.90/liter in September 2024, that source said.
The tracking group BenzinpreisAktuell on Nov. 8 reported the cheapest retail gasoline in Germany was in Stuttgart ($1.81) and the most expensive was in Hamburg ($1.90) – prices effectively unchanged, or technically a bit less than a year ago.
Prices in Germany for natural gas – prior to its invasion Russia’s single biggest foreign exchange earner by a substantial margin – likewise have not behaved and are not behaving the way Zakharova claimed they were.
In fact, German natural gas prices for the past three years have dropped, and right now they are less than one-quarter the price of natural gas across Germany, compared to the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to market-published pricing for natural gas delivered to Germany’s border, the most expensive that natural gas has been in recent memory was in July 2022, when a single unit of natural gas, called a MMBtu, cost $69.22/MMBtu.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, notwithstanding very substantial steps taken by the German and EU governments away from Russian natural gas imports. By July 2023 German natural gas prices were about one-fifth of pre-war levels. On Nov. 8 the per MMBTu price was $11.75, less than one quarter of peak prices in 2022 just before the full-scale invasion, the YCharts economic analysis group reported.
Across the continent the picture was much the same: high fuel prices the moment Russia invaded, and stable and lower fuel prices three years later.
A March 2024 EU report on energy policy said: “Wholesale gas and electricity prices rose to historic levels before starting to fall in 2023, partly due to rapid EU joint emergency measures. Gas prices remained very high until the end of 2022, after which they gradually decreased to more manageable levels due to regulatory actions, reduced demand and improvements in other market fundamentals.”
According to data compiled by EuroStat, Europe’s turn away from Russian fuel was first driven by blistering high Russian export prices, and then accelerated after Russia invaded Ukraine and European states moved to uncouple their economies from Russia’s.
According to detailed data published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Analysis, European energy markets have not only found alternatives to Russian fuel, but there has also been a near-stampede of competitors fighting for a piece of the lucrative market share abandoned by the Kremlin.
Since February 2022, in Germany alone, 16 billion tons of new LNG (liquified natural gas) processing capacity – the key infrastructure needed to import natural gas large-scale by ship from a producer such as the US or Qatar – and another 30-plus billion in capacity in the Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, France, Finland and Belgium.
The battle to replace Russian gas in European markets has been so intense, that now manufacturers are battling with excess capacity. According to EU data, an average LNG terminal somewhere in Europe was working at about 62.8 percent capacity in the first half of 2023.
The figure was 47.2 percent European LNG terminal capacity in the first half of 2024: a hard market indicator diametrically opposite Zakharova’s image of a 2024 Europe starved for cheap Russian gas, and without alternative fuel sources.
According to EU data, Russia is still exporting LNG to Europe. But already, competing imports from the US, Qatar and Algeria have grabbed the lion’s share – usually better than two thirds – of all major markets.
According to Eurostat figures, the share of Russia’s pipeline gas in total EU imports dropped from over 40 percent in 2021 to about 8 percent in 2023. For pipeline gas and LNG combined, Russia accounted for less than 15 percent of total EU gas imports.
The big winners in Russia’s ongoing ejection from the EU gas market have been market shares grabbed by Norway (30 percent of imports), the US (19 percent) and North Africa (14 percent).
Zakharova offered no evidence to back up her claim that cheap Russian gas was the key to German and EU economic strength.
The EU will be totally weaned from Russian energy by 2027, Brussels officials have vowed.
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