Spain’s natural gas imports in November fell 0.7% year on year, data from Spanish grid operator Enagas ENAG.MC showed on Thursday.

Europe’s gas inventories have climbed as a warm start to autumn delayed the onset of heating demand, prompting a drop in imports.

Spain imported the equivalent of 34,539 gigawatt hours (GWh) of natural gas in November, slightly lower than the 34,771 GWh a year earlier, an Enagas statement said.

The United States supplied almost 37% of the gas imported to Spain in November, the largest supplier, followed by Algeria (27.6%) and Russia (18.6%).

The European Union has a goal of ditching Russian fossil fuels by 2027, but the bloc is still paying large sums for Russian LNG.

LNG shipments represented 69.4% of the total imports while purchases through pipelines represented 30.6%, Enagas said.

In the third quarter of last year, Europe’s LNG imports rose massively after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended energy markets.

On the demand side, the use of gas by industrial, commercial and domestic customers rose almost 8% from a year earlier.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Matteo Allievi, Editing by Emma Pinedo and David Goodman)