Think Tank Backs 10bcm South East Europe Gas Corridor to Replace Russian Supply
A proposed SEE route could absorb volumes lost when Russian transit ended, but Azerbaijan's unresolved supply position leaves the route short of committed gas.
A think tank has identified a 10 billion cubic metre South East European gas corridor as a viable replacement for Russian pipeline supply, Montel reported on Wednesday (2026-09-16). ICE Endex TTF front-month held at €80.08/MWh in early Wednesday (2026-09-16) trade, unchanged on the session, a sign that markets have spent the past year adjusting to Russian volumes leaving European networks rather than treating their absence as a fresh shock.7
The proposal targets a specific gap. Russian gas transit through Ukraine ended when the bilateral transit agreement expired, leaving South East European buyers without a key supply route. CEPA, a Washington-based think tank, argued in May (2026-05-19) that any arrangement keeping Russian pipelines operational under any guise amounted to "a thinly disguised effort to permit Gazprom to continue using Ukraine as a transit route," preserving Kremlin revenues of roughly $5 billion annually.3
South East Europe's supply map had already been redrawn in practice. Serbian President Aleksander Vucic celebrated Russian gas deliveries in January 2026 through a route running via Bulgaria and the Balkans, according to DW reporting from May (2026-05-19). That workaround kept Russian molecules moving to the region after the Ukraine corridor closed, illustrating both the demand for alternative routing and the difficulty of enforcing a clean supply break.4
The 10bcm figure in the proposal sits just below Azerbaijan's current European throughput. Azerbaijan supplied roughly 12 billion cubic metres to Europe through the Southern Gas Corridor in 2023, according to CEPA data. A dedicated 10bcm SEE route implies either expanded Azerbaijani output, new supply sources, or both. Neither is currently committed.3
The Azerbaijani picture is further complicated by what Eurasianet reported in May (2026-05-19): Azerbaijan had itself begun importing Russian gas, raising questions about whether Baku was re-exporting Moscow's molecules to meet existing European obligations. A source close to the consortium owning the Shah Deniz field, which supplies all of Azerbaijan's gas exports, told Eurasianet that no new export contracts had been signed.5
Russia's production data shows why alternative supply cannot simply come from redirected Russian volumes. Output fell 3.2% in the first half of this year to approximately 334.8 billion cubic metres by June, based on Bloomberg reporting from July 2025. LNG production fell 5.1% over the same period, to around 16.5 million tonnes, per federal statistics. Production is contracting, not expanding.2
What Russian gas remains is heading east. Power of Siberia pipeline exports are projected to rise more than 20% this year toward the line's maximum annual capacity of 38 billion cubic metres, Bloomberg reported. Russia's total pipeline gas exports to China were expected up around 25% in 2025, Reuters reported in December (2025-12-15), citing a source familiar with the data. European volumes are not being freed up; they are simply lost.2,6
A Dutch-based think tank argued in May (2026-05-18) that Europe's departure from Russian gas risks substituting one dependency for another. Growing reliance on US LNG could expose European buyers to American trade policy shocks, Montel reported. A diversified SEE corridor could reduce that exposure, but only if it carries gas that is not Russian in origin.1
The Shah Deniz field supplies every cubic metre Azerbaijan currently exports to Europe, and the Shah Deniz consortium has signed no new export contracts. If a fresh SEE corridor ends up carrying the same contracted Azerbaijani volumes through different pipes, it adds infrastructure but not supply.5