Legal dispute with OMV

Kremlin justifies gas freeze: “No charity”

(Bild: AFP/OLGA MALTSEVA)

The Kremlin has its own view of the breach of contract. According to the Foreign Ministry, Russia considers the suspension of gas supplies to OMV to be fully justified ...

"We have no intention of being charitable in this case," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Russian state news agency Tass. Gazprom has not been supplying gas to OMV under the long-term supply contract since last Saturday. However, Russian gas continues to flow to Austria.

The background to this is a legal dispute between OMV and the Russian company Gazprom over supply interruptions. Zakharova said that there were objective reasons for the reduced delivery in September 2022.

Flimsy justification from the Kremlin
She cited the blowing up of the Nord Stream Baltic Sea pipeline and the shutdown of transit through the Yamal-Europe pipeline. These factors had been ignored. Moscow itself had already completely stopped gas deliveries through the Yamal-Europe pipeline in spring 2022. The reason given at the time was that Poland did not want to switch payment to roubles.

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.

Kremlin complains of "dishonest behavior"
In formal terms, Zakharova justified Gazprom's suspension of gas deliveries to OMV with a decree issued by President Vladimir Putin on March 31, 2022, which not only stipulates ruble payments for Russian gas, but also explicitly prohibits gas deliveries after the specified payment deadline. If the arbitration court ruling on damages had been complied with under a different supply contract, this would inevitably have led to further non-payments and thus to the free withdrawal of Russian gas. "This is dishonest behavior on the part of the Austrian company," she commented.