Russian gas giant Gazprom cut off supply to Europe via Poland

Russian gas giant Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Europe via the Yamal pipeline through Poland after Russia imposed sanctions against the Polish owner of that stretch, EuRoPol GAZ, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

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“In accordance with the decree of the president of the Russian Federation of May 3 and the Government’s resolution of May 11, sanctions were imposed on several foreign companies. Among them is EuRoPol GAZ, which owns the Polish section of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline,” said Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kuprianov.

He added, in the Telegram account of the Russian gas company, that “a ban on transactions and payments has been imposed in favor of people subject to sanctions, which means in particular for Gazprom a ban on the use of the gas pipeline owned by EuRoPol GAZ to transport Russian gas through Poland.

The Polish side also repeatedly violated the rights of Gazprom as a shareholder of EuRoPol GAZ, and on April 26 put the Russian company on the sanctions list, “blocking the company’s ability to exercise rights to shares and other securities of EuRoPol GAZ, and receive dividends,” according to the spokesperson.

The Yamal-Europe transnational gas pipeline crosses the territory of four countries: Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany. Its capacity is 32.9 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Recently, this route for the transportation of gas to Europe has practically not been used due to the lack of requests from European consumers, according to the official agency TASS.

Gazprom already suspended gas “completely” at the end of April, not only to Poland (through the gas distributor PGNiG), but also Bulgaria (Bulgargaz), for refusing to pay for supplies in rubles, as Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded in another decree dated March 31.

On Wednesday, Russia included 31 foreign energy companies, including EuRoPol Gaz, on Moscow’s list of sanctions and therefore “they will not be able to participate in the processes of supplying gas from Russia”, according to the Kremlin.

“These are sanctions that veto these companies. Therefore, we will not have any interaction with these companies, they are simply banned, ”Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said in his daily telephone press conference.

The sanctioned companies include companies from Germany, France and other European countries, as well as the US and Singapore.

In particular, the list included the former European subsidiaries of Gazprom (Gazprom Germania, Gazprom Switzerland, Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA), as well as Vemex, Wingas, EuRoPol GAZ and operators of underground deposits.

Source: Elcomercio

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