Russia holds the Discontinuation of gas deliveries to OMV According to the Foreign Ministry, it is perfect justified. “We do not intend to engage in charity in this case,” said a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Sakharova according to the Russian state news agency Tass.
Since last Saturday, Gazprom has stopped supplying gas to OMV under its long-standing supply contract. However, Russian gas continues to flow to Austria.
The background is a legal dispute between OMV and the Russian company Gazprom due to supply interruptions. Zakharova said there were objective reasons for the reduced delivery in September 2022. She mentioned the blowing up of the Nord Stream Baltic Sea pipeline and the shutdown of transit through the Yamal-Europe line. These factors were ignored.
Moscow itself had completely stopped gas deliveries through the Yamal-Europe line in the spring of 2022. The reason given at the time was that Poland did not want to switch payments to rubles.
“Dishonest behavior”
An arbitration court awarded OMV 230 million euros in damages in the legal dispute. OMV then announced that it would offset the claim against payment obligations to the Russian gas supplier.
Zakharova formally justified the cessation of gas deliveries by Gazprom to OMV with a decree from President Vladimir Putin of March 31, 2022, which not only requires ruble payments for Russian gas, but also explicitly prohibits gas deliveries after the designated payment period has expired. If the arbitral tribunal’s decision on compensation had been followed within the framework of another supply contract, this would inevitably have led to a further lack of transfers and thus to the free withdrawal of Russian gas. “This is dishonest behavior on the part of the Austrian company,” she commented.
“Fake at the state level”
In her weekly briefing on Thursday afternoon, Zakharova simultaneously criticized Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), whose press conference on the cessation of Russian gas deliveries to OMV she smilingly described as “another fantastic fake at the state level”.
Nehammer’s statements on November 15th were “disgusting” and he did not skimp on baseless accusations against Russia, saying that Austria would not allow itself to be blackmailed and would continue to support the “Kiev regime” despite the lack of gas deliveries from Russia.