European natural gas imports

According to Eurostat annual data*, European natural gas imports slightly declined since 2010. The largest natural gas importing countries are Germany (which represent about 1/4 of overall EU imports), Italy, UK, France and Spain. The security of the EU’s natural gas supplies threatened by a high proportion of imports concentrated among relatively few partners. More than three quarters of the EU-28’s imports from outside of European Union comes from Russia, Norway and Algeria.

Despite the gradual reduction of natural gas imports from Russia over the last two decades, Russia still remains the largest source of EU natural gas imports. For some countries, such as Austria, russian supplies represent more than 60% of overall natural gas imports, and some countries (such as Chezh Republic) depends on russian gas imports almost completely.

Select the country of origin in the list at the page's top to see the natural gas supplies distribution from that country among EU member states on the map and the ranking of importing countries by import amounts. Select the importing country on the ranking gadget to identify its main sources for natural gas and explore its natural gas' import structure.

Please note that the primary units of reporting natural gas statistics in EU are units of energy value (joules), determined from physical volumes on the gross calorific value basis. Each of the gas flows may have a significantly different calorific value, and within each flow, the components might have different values (e.g. production from various fields of differing gas qualities, or imports from different sources). Calorific values also change over time. To convert natural gas from volume units to terajoules the volume, in cubic metres, should be multiplied by the gross calorific value to obtain the energy volume in terajoules. Concerning imports data, a weighted average gross calorific value are applied. Total imports are determined as a sum of each of the sources individually converted. For example, country A is importing 3 000 Mm3 natural gas from the Netherlands and 5 000 Mm3 from Norway, with a respective calorific value of 33.3 TJ/m3 and 41.0 TJ/m3. To calculate the average calorific value of imports, proportion the respective imports with their calorific values are used. 

For futher information concerning methodology and computations please consult the Eurostat's Energy Statistics Manual and other Eurostat's resources.

Data source: Imports (by country of origin) - gas - annual data (Eurostat dataset [nrg_124a])