OREANDA-NEWS  Belgian Energy Minister Tinne van der Straten called on the EU to take union-wide measures to ban imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), as the existing restrictive measures, in her opinion, do not justify themselves, writes the Financial Times.

Belgium, one of Europe's largest importers of liquefied natural gas from Russia, has called on the EU to ban Russian fuel, warning that importing companies cannot break long-term contracts unless the union imposes sanctions as a single jurisdiction. Tinne van der Straten, Belgium's energy minister, told the Financial Times that the EU must "go further" to prevent Russian LNG from entering the union, as concerns about increased imports continue to grow," the publication says.

According to van der Straten, the measures introduced by Brussels in December 2023 and prohibiting Russian energy companies from using the EU infrastructure did not provide sufficient legal grounds for importing companies using European ports such as the Belgian Zeebrugge to terminate long-term contracts with the Russian side.

According to the data provided by the publication, Zeebrugge received the largest volume of Russian LNG from September 2023 to September 2024 - 5.17 million tons.

The European Union actively began to impose sanctions against Russia after the start of a special operation in Ukraine in February 2022, and this caused a sharp jump in gas prices. An additional factor for the high prices of "blue fuel" in the region was the undermining of the "Northern Streams" in September of the same year. Demand for liquefied natural gas has increased, and the United States has become its main supplier to the European Union, occupying almost half of the market, and their revenues from these supplies reached 48.3 billion euros in 2022 against 7 billion a year earlier.

Russia initially sent small volumes of LNG to the EU, but supplies grew and by the end of seven months of this year took up almost 19% of total imports.