Spain’s gas imports rise 16% driven by seaborne LNG purchases

– Spain’s natural gas imports in March rose 16% from a year earlier, driven by more purchases of seaborne liquefied natural gas (LNG), government data showed on Monday.

Spain imported the equivalent to 37,582 gigawatt hours (GWh) of natural gas in March, the data from Cores, an arm of the Energy and Environment Ministry, showed.

LNG shipments jumped 75% and represented more than two thirds of the total imports, while purchases through pipelines, mainly from Algeria, fell 48%, Cores said.

Spain re-exported the equivalent of 2,845 GWh of gas, 83% more than in March 2021.

Russian gas accounted for 8.7% of Spanish imports in March, an increase of 1.5 percentage points compared to March 2021.

In the first quarter of 2022, Spain’s imports of natural gas reached 113,306 GWh, the highest for a first quarter since 2008.