ACER, the EU agency coordinating national energy regulators, published its first mandated Russian-gas phase-out monitoring report on 1 July and found Russian gas still supplied roughly 12% of EU demand. Since the short-term import ban took effect on 18 March, Russian LNG imports have risen 17% year-on-year across the 18 March to 31 May window, and pipeline imports are up 5%. One route bucked the trend: flows through Turkiye's Strandzha-1 entry point fell 65%.
Frontloading ahead of the deadline, contract adjustments and retained transhipment cargoes kept Russian LNG volumes climbing even as the ban bound, the reverse of what its headline implied. This desk read the 17 June pipeline step-down as legal paperwork rather than a physical supply event, because the routes carrying the volume ran exempt and the Central European hub's ban premium compressed back toward flat within a day.
For a spreads desk the read is that the March measure moved prices, not barrels. ACER has now dated and sized that gap: the 12% share is a quarterly scorecard rather than a cut, and the regulator states plainly that the harder impacts land later, not now. Traders position against the number itself, updated each July, rather than against a diffuse policy fear.
