Gazprom, the Russian state company with a monopoly on the export of natural gas, has announced that starting this Saturday it will suspend the supply of this hydrocarbon to Austria, as confirmed this Friday by the Austrian company OMV.
“OMV Gas Marketing & Trading GmbH (OGMT) has just received the information from Gazprom Export that Gazprom Export will suspend (and therefore reduce to 0%) its natural gas supplies under its Austrian supply contract with OGMT from 6:00 CET on November 16, 2024″the company has reported through the Central European Gas Hub (CEGH).
The Central European utility estimates that the volume of natural gas affected will amount to up to 7,400 MWh/h.
Gazprom’s cut in the supply of natural gas comes after OMV announced on Wednesday its intention to recover 230 million euros in damages plus interest and costs in relation to Gazprom Export’s irregular supplies of German gas in 2022 following the arbitration award in its favor by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
In this sense, OGMT indicated that it would seek compensation for its claims for damages with invoices under the Austrian gas supply contract with Gazprom Export and warned that “a deterioration of the contractual relationship under the Austrian supply contract of OGMT with Gazprom Export, including a possible interruption of gas supplies, was to be expected” .
In this case, as part of OMV’s ongoing diversification strategy, the Austrian company then stressed that it has continuously and successfully increased its gas supplies from non-Russian sources and additional pipeline capacities, including gas from Norway, as well as additional long-term LNG volumes.
In this way, OMV confirmed that it can deliver all contracted volumes of gas to its customers in the event of a possible interruption of supply by Gazprom Export. Besides, OMV’s gas storage in Austria currently exceeds 90%.
Despite the reassuring message from the Austrian company, after the communication of the suspension of Russian gas supplies to Austria, hydrocarbon prices registered increases close to 3% to trade at the highest level in a year.
For its part, Gazprom commented yesterday that the actions of the European Union countries are aimed at “artificially destroy gas demand to the detriment of their own economies”ensuring that the policies implemented by EU governments have led to a further decrease in gas consumption, the closure of energy-intensive industries and the transfer of production capacities to other regions.
In this way, the Russian company predicted that gas consumption in Europe will continue to decrease at a rate that will depend, in particular, on the future political decisionswhile European gas production is not expected to grow in the long term due to the depletion of its own resource base.
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