Gazprom's involvement in the war in Ukraine Gazprom contributes significantly to the Russian government's capacity to wage war on Ukraine. As the Atlantic Council think-tank put it, "many consider Gazprom to be a geopolitical tool with which the Kremlin attempts to expand its influence in Europe and strenghten its grip on the continent's energy security".

According to the Atlantic Council, Gazprom also played a role in setting the invasion in motion by holding back gas from European markets to push up prices.  The development of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, from Leningrad to the north-eastern coast of Germany, was also used as a geopolitical tool to destabilise Ukraine and increase European reliance on Russian gas. Right before the invasion, Germany stopped the operation of the project (see below).

Since the start of the war, Gazprom has continued to act as a government proxy in the energy war. On 2nd September 2022, Gazprom announced an indefinite shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the largest pipeline from Russia to Europe. The company blamed the move on a detected leak, although the announcement occurred just after G7 countries agreed on a price cap on Russian oil. 

In November 2022, Russia's federal budget revenues increased by 31% in comparison to November 2021 thanks to Gazprom's one-time payments that exceeded 1 trillion rubles. Hence, Gazprom also plays a crucial role in guaranteeing Russia's economic capacity to finance war in Ukraine.

Impacts on Indigenous people in Yamal Peninsula  Gazprom is the developer of several constituent parts of the Yamal Megaproject to exploit gas reserves in the Yamal Peninsula, including the Bovanenkovo-Ukhta pipelines I, II and III and related railroad. This is an area inhabited by the Nenets, an Indigenous people. Nenets are highly dependent on reindeer-herding, but the project’s encroachment on reindeer pasture lands has resulted in a loss of livelihood for the Nenets people. Other human rights and social harms are peculiar to specific sub-projects.

The project has disrupted the Nenet's migration routes, leading to the loss of their cultural heritage and traditions. Some members of the Nenets community preferred leaving their territories rather than losing their nomadic culture and being forced to live in permanent settlements, thus facing displacement and land dispossession. 

Additionally, Gazprom's Obskaya-Bovanenkovo railroad project, which is instrumental to the wider Megaproject, crosses the Yuribey river, the banks and waters of which hold ritual, sacred and spiritual significance to the Nenets people, posing yet another serious challenge to the Nenets' traditional lifestyle. 

Gazprom is the third-largest corporate grennhouse gas producer globally since 1965, according to analysis by the Climate Accountability Institute. Since its inception, Gazprom has been responsible for driving climate change by contributing 43.23 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to the earth's atmosphere. Its 2021 production of 514.8 cubic metres of gas results in 1.039 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. The company has active short-term plans to massively expand its conventional and unconventional oil extraction and it is the first oil and gas expansionist in the Arctic region. 

Gazprom is also a major flarer of gas, which creates carbon and soot emissions. In August 2022, Gazprom was found flaring 4.34 million cubic metres of gas a day un its Portovaya plant. According to Rystad,  this is an "environmental disaster with about 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted every day". Flares in the Arctic region are particularly worrying, because they are likely to produce soot that by settling on the ground will facilitate the absorption of sunlight, thus accelerating ice and snow melting. 

Climate change is causing dramatic impacts in areas of Gazprom's operations. For example, the unique ecosystem of the Yamal tundra, location of the Yamal megaproject, is threatened by warmer summers and rapid temperature shifts. The defrosting of river and seas ice will result in higher sea levels, with the risk of putting the peninsula underwater, creating risks in turn for gas developments. 

Nord Stream leak On September 26th 2022, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were hit by explosions that caused the release of huge amounts of gas in the Baltic Sea. Neither of the two pipelines was transporting gas at the moment of the explosions, but both contained pressurised methane - a greenhouse gas more harmful than carbon dioxide. The Danish Energy Agency estimated that up to 778 million cubic metres of methane gas could spill from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the worst case scenario. Climate scientists said that the amount of methane discharge from the detonations is a "reckless release" of greenhouse gas that, if delibarate, '"amounts to an environmental crime"'.

Impacts of the Yamal Megaproject The Yamal Megaproject has huge environmental impacts, including biophysical land degradation, loss of biodiversity as well as soil and water pollution. The construction of underwatr pipelines causes the destruction of both underwater and coastal landscape as well as the change of stream patterns and water depletion. Greenpeace said "contracting companies disrupted the water flow of the rivers, violated the regulations of nature parks and left behind landfills of construction waste". 

Local communities report that the new Yamal underwater gas project, launched in December 2021, might have already damaged the marine ecosystem of the Ob bay. Scientists from the Ural Institute of the Ecology of Flora and Fauna also warned that dredging activities might "be the end to the so-called semi-anadromous fish stocks in the area". 

The list of EU sanctions in place against Russia is available here.

The list of  US sanctions in place against Russia is available here.