Andrei Klepach News

Russia is hoping its shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will offset a sharp fall in pipeline gas exports to Europe, but a shortage of gas tankers and sanctions hold back its plans, analysts and industry sources said.Russia wants to boost its share of the LNG market to 20% by 2030 from 8% now, but a force majeure declaration by top producer Novatek over LNG supplies from its future Arctic LNG 2 project due to sanctions shows the hurdles it faces.Novatek's announcement comes after the United States last month imposed sanctions on Arctic LNG 2…

A Russian deputy economy minister said on Tuesday that he did not rule out weaker European demand for Russian oil and gas due to tension over Ukraine. Andrei Klepach also told reporters that Ukraine is likely to reduce Russian gas purchases this year to 20 billion cubic metres, from 25.8 billion in 2013, because of difficulties paying for deliveries. "This is not (a result of) sanctions, but one may anticipate a certain decrease in demand for our hydrocarbons both from Ukraine and from European countries," he said. (Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Steve Gutterman)