Natural gas production in Europe
The natural gas production of the countries in the European Union also fell in 2007, similarly to the trend of the previous years. While 204 billion cubic metres of natural gas was brought to the surface in the EU countries in 2006, this quantity was only 191 billion cubic metres in 2007. In 2007 the average value of the decrease in comparison to the previous year was 6.4 percent. Production significantly declined in Denmark and Italy (by 11 percent), and also in the United Kingdom (by 9.5 percent). The volume of natural gas exploited in Norway increased to a lesser extent than in the previous year: while in 2006 the increase was 4 percent, in 2007 it was only 2.4 percent. Norway still remained the largest gas producing country in Europe with a quantity of 89 billion cubic metres of natural gas exploited in 2007, while the second largest producer was Great Britain (72 billion cubic metres in 2007). Germany (14 billion cubic metres) and Romania (11 billion cubic metres) are among the major natural gas producing countries, although the quantity of natural gas exploited also decreased in these countries.
Thus 52 percent of the consumed natural gas came from European sources in 2007 (in 2006 it was 53 percent), and the remaining 48 percent came from non-European countries. The development of the export source distribution in 2007 was as follows:
Regarding the deliveries outside Algeria and Russia, the significance of delivery in the liquefied form grew further in 2007. The LNG deliveries towards Europe amounted to 47 billion cubic metres. The largest LNG importer in Europe is Spain: last year Spain purchased altogether 24 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas from Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Nigeria.