Data • methane
Methane: a system read at its joints
Finland's gas system is small enough to see whole, which makes it the cleanest demonstration of this site's design rule: dependent data joins at measured bottlenecks. Every molecule enters through one of four joints, each with a published capacity and a measured flow[3]; demand halved when the biggest joint closed in 2022[1]; the whole chain ran at its combined limit for days in January 2026[8]. This page tracks the flows monthly, the joints weekly, and places methane in the total energy mix, where it now carries about 2.9 percent[4].
How to read this page: ● measured sourced data · ◐ inferred analyst reading, basis linked · ○ projected anchored to a real starting point. Bracketed citations link to the sources at the foot of the page.
The halving
Monthly inland consumption, TWh gross calorific value, to 2026-05. ● measured
Finnish gas demand ran near 26 TWh a year until the Russian supply cut of May 2022, then roughly halved in a single year, to 13.6 TWh in 2022, recovering partway and settling around 15.4 TWh in 2025[1]. Industry and combined heat and power did the adjusting; the winter spikes that remain are the power system leaning on gas when cold, windless weeks arrive, which is exactly when the joints below get tested[8].
The joints: capacity and flow at every entry
Weekly mean entry flows per network point, GWh per day, from Gasgrid's transparency data. ● measured
Four joints, one story each. The Russian entry at Imatra flatlines in May 2022. The Balticconnector becomes the workhorse, disappears for six and a half months after the October 2023 anchor damage, and returns in April 2024[7]. The Inkoo floating terminal, chartered as the crisis answer, fills exactly the gap the outage leaves: its bookings sit near 67 GWh a day, but its measured entry ran to 107 in the outage winter's first January week, which is the number that counts[6,3]. In January 2026 the system peaked near 120 GWh a day with the Balticconnector fully utilised at its raised winter capacity[8]; against a proven joint capability of roughly 188 GWh a day the chain held with headroom, and the joint that bound was the cheap one, not the last one.
— Imatra (Russia) · — Balticconnector · — Inkoo FSRU · — Hamina. Weekly means smooth daily peaks, so the January 2026 spike reads lower here than its ~120 GWh/d daily maximum. The dashed line is the sum of firm capacities at the three live entries[3]. The system also exports south when the Baltic market pulls: the Balticconnector's exit capacity (78 GWh/d) exceeds its entry (50).
Balticconnector (Estonia to Finland)
●Capacity firm technical is seasonal: 50 GWh/d standard entry, raised to ~70-76 in winter; 78 exit[3,7,8]
The only pipeline joint since the Russian Imatra entry went quiet. Damaged by a dragged anchor on 8 October 2023 and out for six and a half months, back in commercial use 22 April 2024; in January 2026 it ran fully utilised at its raised winter capacity. Even the capacity is a time series here, not a constant.
Inkoo FSRU (Exemplar)
●Capacity ~140 GWh/d regasification nameplate; measured weekly grid entry up to ~107 GWh/d[6,3]
The crisis response of 2022-2023, chartered after the Russian cut. Bookings often sit near 67 GWh/d, but the outage winter is the better witness: with the Balticconnector dead, Inkoo's measured entry ran to 107 GWh/d in the first week of January 2024. The measured series outranks the booked one.
Hamina LNG
●Capacity ~4.8 GWh/d into the grid (~1.7 TWh/yr)[11,6]
Small-scale, steady baseload into the southeast of the network. Pori and Tornio serve industry and bunkering off-grid and are not transmission joints.
Imatra (Russia)
●Capacity 0 since 21 May 2022[3]
The former main artery, dead in the data: the ENTSOG series shows the flow stop in May 2022 and the firm technical capacity now reads zero.
Turn the joints: the scenario board
Capacity arithmetic on the joints above; measured inputs ● measured, scenario outputs ○ projected
The first working module of a per-commodity bottleneck simulator: set each joint's capacity, pick a measured demand day, and read the system's margin. Gas goes first because Finland's system is honest simulation material, four joints, published capacities, and one real outage to validate against. The board deliberately knows nothing about prices or behaviour; what it demonstrates is how far transparent chain arithmetic gets before any modelling assumptions enter.
The system, live from the controls below: edge width tracks capacity, a closed joint goes red, and the dashed red stub is unserved demand. Route costs are real trailing-12-month average import costs, customs values over Eurostat energy (to 2026-04)[14,2]; they exclude Gasgrid transmission tariffs and terminal fees, the assumed-cost layer priced in Gasgrid's service price list[15].
The joints (GWh per day)
winter firm ~70-76; standard 50[3]
The system's answer ○ projected
Joint capability 181 GWh/d (incl. ~0.4 of grid biomethane[10]) against a measured cold-month average (jan 2026) of 80 GWh/d[8].
Demand clears at these capacities. The margin is what the next failed joint eats first.
Validation Run backwards over the real outage: Balticconnector at zero, winter 2023-24 demand at its measured ~80 GWh/d cold-month average, and the board clears it on Inkoo and Hamina alone, which is what the measured flows show happened, Inkoo peaking at 107[3]. A board that used Inkoo's booked 67 instead would have predicted a deficit that never occurred; the measured capability is the honest parameter.
What this board is not: it assumes no demand response and models no rerouting or market behaviour. The route costs it shows are realized averages, not forecasts, and scenario deficits are volumes, not prices. It is capacity arithmetic on cited numbers, the gas module of a per-commodity simulator whose rule is that dependent data joins at measured bottlenecks. Demand bases differ by preset (Gasgrid network reporting for peak and cold; Eurostat national, which includes off-grid LNG, for the averages) and are cited per preset.
Where the molecules come from
Imports by origin and form, yearly, TWh (GCV). ● measured
Unlike Finland's crude oil, the gas origin mix is public, and it records the whole pivot: Russian pipeline gas dominant through 2021, cut in May 2022, replaced by Balticconnector flows from the Baltic market and by LNG, mostly American and Norwegian, through Inkoo and Hamina[2]. The honest wrinkle the data also records: LNG cargoes of Russian origin reappear in the mix in 2024, small but nonzero, the kind of detail an origin story without data would smooth away[2].
2026 is year to date. Pipeline versus LNG split from the same table; "other" is small residual pipeline flows[2]. Every LNG cargo is seaborne through the Danish straits this site already measures at the chokepoint monitor[13], the joint upstream of these joints.
In the total mix, and on the road
Gas in total energy consumption (quarterly, NCV) and road-transport gas by type (yearly). ● measured
Share of total energy consumption
Natural gas carried 5 to 6 percent of Finnish energy before 2022 and about 2.9 percent now[4]. Methane is no longer a pillar of the energy mix; it is winter flexibility, which is why capacity at the joints matters more than annual volume.
Road-transport gas, GWh
■ biogas · ■ natural gas. Road gas is now effectively all biomethane: 516 GWh of biogas against 0 of natural gas in 2025[5].
The transport panel closes the loop with the government-targets scoreboard: the 2016 strategy's 50,000 gas vehicles never came (18,780 gas-capable automobiles in 2026Q1[12]), but the gas those vehicles do burn quietly became renewable, and it grew every year, 365 to 424 to 516 GWh over 2023 to 2025[5]. The domestic chain behind it is thin at a measurable joint: 31 upgrading units across ~100 biogas plants, only 5 of them injecting into the transmission network, about ~1% of network gas[10,9]. ◐ inferred The e-methane projects that would widen that joint sit pre-FID on the investment tracker, which is the dependency edge between these two pages.
Sources and method (15)
- [1] Eurostat, nrg_cb_gasm: supply, transformation and consumption of gas, monthly, Finland (TJ gross calorific value; reuse authorised with attribution)
- [2] Eurostat, nrg_ti_gasm: monthly natural-gas imports by partner and by form (pipeline vs LNG), Finland; unlike crude oil, not confidentiality-suppressed
- [3] ENTSOG Transparency Platform, operator FI-TSO-0003 (Gasgrid Finland): daily physical flow and firm technical capacity per network point (Inkoo, Hamina, Balticconnector, Imatra)
- [4] Statistics Finland, StatFin 12st: total energy consumption by source, quarterly (CC BY 4.0); natural gas as its own class, net calorific value
- [5] Statistics Finland, StatFin 12sz: energy consumption in transport by source (CC BY 4.0); natural gas and biogas as separate classes
- [6] Gasgrid Finland, LNG terminals (Inkoo floating terminal, storage 151,000 m3, regasification capability ~140 GWh/d, over 40 TWh/yr)
- [7] Gasgrid Finland (19 Apr 2024): Balticconnector in commercial use from 22 April 2024, ending the outage that began with the anchor damage of 8 October 2023
- [8] Gasgrid Finland (13 Feb 2026): gas demand at record high in early 2026; January averaged 70-80 GWh/d, peaked near 120 GWh/d (~2.5 TWh in the month), with Balticconnector fully utilised and the rest covered by the Inkoo and Hamina LNG terminals
- [9] Gasgrid Finland, Gas Market Review (28 Nov 2025): strong growth in biomethane use; grid-injected biomethane still around one percent of network gas; renewable-gas certificate imports rising
- [10] Suomen Biokierto ja Biokaasu ry, biogas statistics: ~100 biogas plants, 31 biomethane upgrading units (Apr 2026); 2024 biomethane output ~250 GWh; five plants inject into the transmission network (~130 GWh in 2024)
- [11] Hamina LNG terminal (grid-connected October 2022): regasification into the network ~4.8 GWh/d, ~1.7 TWh/yr
- [12] A1AYN, EV & Fuel Observatory: the 2016 strategy's 50,000 gas-vehicle target, scored on the Traficom register (18,780 gas-capable automobiles in 2026Q1)
- [13] IMF PortWatch via this site's chokepoint monitor: Öresund Strait daily transits, the seaborne joint upstream of every LNG cargo into Inkoo and Hamina
- [14] Finnish Customs (Tulli) ULJAS, CN 271111 and 271121: monthly EUR import values of LNG and pipeline gas (CC BY 4.0); import quantities are confidentiality-suppressed since 2023 but values are published, so real average cost per route is derived by joining these with Eurostat energy volumes
- [15] Gasgrid Finland, service price list 2026 (the assumed-cost layer: transmission tariffs and terminal service fees, not included in the derived import unit costs)
Snapshots fetched 2026-07-04 by the manual yarn data:methane script (never in the build chain): Eurostat monthly gas balance and imports-by-partner to 2026-05; ENTSOG Transparency Platform daily flows and firm technical capacities per Finnish network point, aggregated to weekly means; Tulli ULJAS monthly import values for LNG and pipeline gas (fetched via curl, the legacy endpoint rejects Node's HTTP stack), from which the trailing-12-month real route costs are derived; StatFin quarterly energy mix and annual transport energy (both CC BY 4.0). Calorific-value bases differ by source and are labelled per panel: Eurostat gross (GCV), Statistics Finland net (NCV, ~10.8% lower). Capacity constants are curated from Gasgrid, terminal and industry-association publications with dates in the source list. Off-grid LNG at Pori and Tornio is outside the transmission joints and this page's flows.