FRANKFURT: Germany's natural gas import bill for the three months of January through March fell 4 percent year-on-year on lower prices which overrode a rise in volumes, according to official data from trade statistics office BAFA on Friday.
The total cost was 7.2 billion euros ($9.9 billion) compared with 7.5 billion euros in the same period a year earlier.
The amount of gas imported in Jan-March fell by 2.9 percent year-on-year to 978,690 terajoules* (TJ), reversing the trend of strong year-on-year volume rises in the preceding winter months, which turned out more severe than those in 2012/13.
Many continental European gas prices, including those recorded by BAFA, still track crude oil prices with a time-lag of about six months.
BAFA prices are used in the domestic market to track the cost of imports and to decide whether gas is competitive compared with other fuels.
Russia accounted for 38.1 percent of deliveries in the period under review, Norwegian-origin gas accounted for 29.7 percent and the Netherlands for 27.2 percent in the three months.
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