Brent-linked Yamal cargoes earn TotalEnergies $400m through UK branch

TotalEnergies makes roughly $400 million annually lifting LNG cargoes from Russia's Yamal facility, chief executive Patrick Pouyanne disclosed on a results call, as reported by Bloomberg. The figure fluctuates because the underlying contracts are tied to Brent crude prices, which have firmed to multi-year highs on supply interruptions linked to the conflict in Iran. That earnings stream runs through the group's UK branch, which lifts and sells the cargoes.

The income does not appear in TotalEnergies' formal accounts. After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the company kept its Russian LNG holdings but deconsolidated them, so the cash no longer shows in consolidated reporting. The Financial Times noted the group holds a 20% stake in Yamal LNG and a 19.4% interest in its parent, Novatek, though dividends from that Novatek stake, estimated at around $600 million a year in 2024, remain trapped abroad under sanctions constraints.

What this means for European supply next year

The timing matters for anyone buying gas in 2026. EU member states are currently importing record volumes from Yamal, Russia's largest LNG plant, but EU sanctions taking effect next year will prohibit those imports. The Telegraph reported that European buyers are pulling in unprecedented cargoes ahead of that ban. Removing a supply source from a tight European balance tends to feed through to National Balancing Point (NBP) gas prices, which is the UK reference point most commercial contracts settle against.

Watch these points as the ban approaches:

The chart below shows Brent crude over recent months, the benchmark that anchors these oil-indexed Yamal contracts and sets the value TotalEnergies earns from them.

• EU Yamal import volumes ahead of the 2026 cut-off
• NBP front-month and Season-1 gas response to lost cargoes
• Brent crude, which anchors these oil-indexed LNG contracts
• LNG cargo diversions to Asia that compete for European supply
• Storage injection rates across northwest Europe through summer

Rising Brent prices cut two ways here. They lift the value of TotalEnergies' oil-indexed Yamal cargoes, but they also raise the floor under gas-linked contracts across the European market, tightening budgets for buyers on flexible or index-tracked deals.

For UK buyers, the near-term signal is supply, not this single company's earnings. If EU sanctions remove Russian LNG from the European balance next year without matched replacement volumes, forward curves could steepen through the transition. If you are approaching a renewal that runs into 2026, it is worth pricing that supply risk into your timing rather than assuming current volumes persist.