Gazprom suspends gas deliveries to Latvia


(Reuters) – Russian gas producer Gazprom said on Saturday it had halted supplies to Latvia after accusing it of breaching supply conditions, a move the Baltic country said would only help. limited impact.

Russia has already cut off its gas supply from Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark, which have refused to pay for the gas in accordance with an order from President Vladimir Putin requiring the opening of accounts in rubles in a Russian bank under a new settlement system.

Moscow has also suspended its sales of Shell Energy Europe gas to Germany.

In a press release published on Saturday, Gazprom did not specify the gas supply conditions that Latvia, a neighbor of Russia and a member of the military alliance of the European Union and NATO, would have violated.

Edijs Saicans, deputy state secretary for energy policy in the Latvian economy minister, said Gazprom’s decision would have little effect since Latvia has already decided to ban imports of Russian gas from 1 January. January 2023.

“We don’t see any major impact of such a decision,” he said.

Gazprom’s decision comes a day after Latvian energy firm Latvijas Gaze said it was buying gas from Russia and paying in euros rather than roubles.

A company spokesman, however, said on Friday that Latvijas Gaze was buying gas from Russia, but not Gazprom. Latvijas Gaze declined to name its supplier, citing business secrecy.

In March, Vladimir Putin declared that the world’s largest producer of natural gas would demand that countries designated as “unfriendly”, because of their position on the conflict in Ukraine, pay in rubles for gas supplied to them by pipeline.

The European Commission has warned that complying with the order could breach European Union sanctions against Moscow and urged EU companies to continue paying in the currency agreed in their contracts with Gazprom, whose the vast majority are denominated in euros or dollars.

(Reporting by Reuters, with the contribution of Augustas Stankevicius Vilnius, French version Benjamin Mallet)



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