EU's bill for Russian Yamal LNG hits €8.7bn with 50 days left before ban

The EU paid an estimated €8.7bn for Russia's Yamal LNG in January-October, more than in all of 2025, campaign group Urgewald said on November 12.

EU ports received 177 Yamal cargoes carrying 12.89mn tonnes between January and October, 6.3% more than a year earlier, according to Urgewald's analysis of Kpler shipping data. The estimated bill is about €1.5bn, or 21%, above the roughly €7.2bn the group estimated for all of 2025, and Europe took 81% of the project's recorded deliveries by volume. A Yamal cargo reached an EU port roughly every 1.7 days.

The numbers leave Europe as Yamal's indispensable customer with 50 days to go before the EU's full ban on Russian LNG under existing long-term contracts takes effect on January 1, 2027. Curbs on short-term contracts have applied since April 25, yet EU purchases have kept growing through a year in which the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a gas crisis that drained European storage left buyers taking every cargo they could get. Higher prices have done the rest: the bill is rising faster than the volumes.

October deliveries came to 705,591 tonnes in ten cargoes, worth an estimated €839mn. Volumes were about 11% lower than in September, but the estimated payment rose 2.6% as the monthly average Dutch TTF benchmark climbed to €86.79 per MWh from €75.34. France took 70% of the EU's October volume, with seven cargoes landing at Dunkirk and Montoir, while Spain received two at Bilbao and the Netherlands one at Rotterdam.

Belgium's Zeebrugge terminal, which took no Yamal cargoes in August, September or October, was still the largest single EU destination over the ten months, with 42 cargoes and about 3.1mn tonnes. In July Belgium had been wholly dependent on Russian LNG as the Gulf war choked Qatari supply.

"Europe's estimated bill for Yamal LNG is racing towards a staggering €10 billion this year. These purchases help fund Putin's war machine while Russian attacks devastate Ukraine's cities and energy infrastructure," said Sebastian Rotters, sanctions campaigner at Urgewald. "With just 50 days to go until the January ban, Europe must hold the line. No retreat, no new exemptions and no lifelines for this trade."

The ban will hit Yamal hardest in winter. The plant, led by Russia's Novatek (MOEX: NVTK), relies on a small fleet of Arc7 ice-class tankers, and nearby European ports let them unload and sail back quickly. By December ice keeps non-Arc7 vessels away from Yamal, and only 11 Arc7 cargoes have travelled east along the Northern Sea Route between November and May since 2018, Urgewald said. Without Europe, Russia would have to send its gas on longer voyages at higher cost. Several of the Arc7 tankers have gone through repairs at a Danish yard this year, work that will keep them sailing well after the ban.

Some European buyers are still looking for ways round it. Spain's Naturgy, which has a contract to take about 2.5mn tonnes a year from Yamal until 2041, said on October 29 it sees scope to keep buying Yamal LNG by sending contracted cargoes to markets outside the bloc. Russia is already turning east: it shipped a record 3.42mn tonnes of LNG in October as China bought more cargoes from the sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 plant, Novatek's other Arctic project.

Urgewald's figures are indicative gross estimates, calculated by multiplying each month's delivered tonnes by 13.7 MWh per tonne and that month's TTF price. They do not account for contract discounts, shipping, regasification, taxes or resale, and do not measure Novatek's profit or Russian state income. They cover Yamal LNG only, not Arctic LNG 2 or other Russian LNG. Earlier this year Urgewald found EU imports from Yamal hit a record 12.2mn tonnes in the first nine months.