Russian gas exports reportedly stopped running through Soviet-era Ukrainian pipelines on Wednesday after Ukraine refused to renew a transit agreement.

The Details: Russia's gas firm Gazprom said the gas stopped at 0500 GMT after Ukraine refused to renew the transit agreement in a widely anticipated move.  

Reuters reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram that the end of Russian natural gas flows through Ukraine was "one of Moscow's biggest defeats."

Zelenskyy also encouraged allies to supply more gas to Europe to fill the gap left by the end of the Russian supply.

"The more there is on the market from Europe's real partners, the faster we will overcome the last negative consequences of European energy dependence on Russia," he wrote.

Shares of U.S.-based liquified natural gas exporters, including Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE:DVN) and Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSE:LNG), are up Thursday as LNG exports to Europe are expected to rise in 2025.

"Cheniere's LNG has been a vital part of the European response to Russia's war in Ukraine and has shown how security of supply, in the form of reliability of production and flexibility of delivery, are vastly important for this moment, and for the decades to come," Corey Grindal, COO of Cheniere Energy said in a 2023 interview.

"Cheniere produced about 11% of all LNG worldwide in 2022 and more than 70% of Cheniere's LNG was exported to Europe, by Cheniere or our customers," Grindal added.

The European Commission released a statement stating that the EU had anticipated and prepared for the stoppage of Russian gas flows.

'"The European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin," a spokesperson for the commission said. "It has been reinforced with significant new LNG (liquefied natural gas) import capacities since 2022."

According to Reuters, Hungary will continue to receive Russian gas through the TurkStream pipeline and the last remaining European buyers of Russian gas, Slovakia and Austria, have arranged other supplies.  

The Slovakian government said on Tuesday that there is no danger of a gas shortage and its state-owned gas firm SPP has gas supply contracts with large international suppliers including BP PLC (NYSE:BP), Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) and Shell PLC (NYSE:SHEL).

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