Gas flows into the European Union held steady on Friday as capitals moved to draw up a common response to a threat by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to cut supplies unless buyers paid in roubles.
EU countries are wary of potential disruption and some have warned their citizens to be mindful of their gas use, as Moscow mounts an economic fightback to a punishing western sanctions regime aimed to undercut its ability to wage war in Ukraine.
While Mr Putin had named April 1st as a deadline to comply with demands or face supply cuts, a Kremlin spokesman said payments were not due until the second half of April or May and gas flows would not immediately be interrupted.
Meanwhile, EU capitals sought to play down and push back against the move.
“We are not going to be blackmailed,” one EU diplomat said. “There are contracts, and the contract is set to be paid by euro or dollar.”
Legal experts of the European Commission have been tasked with studying the Russian decree on gas payments announced on Thursday to understand whether it went as far as Mr Putin claimed.
The system may involve using Gazprombank, which has not been hit by EU sanctions, as an intermediary to exchange payments for gas into roubles, in a bid by Russia to support the value of its currency and reduce the impact of sanctions.
But Moscow has already been requiring gas exporters to convert 80 per cent of their revenue into roubles and the step may merely mean this increases to 100 per cent, which would not be a radical change, one official said.
After days of stand-off with the Kremlin, German energy companies reported no disruption to gas deliveries as feared.
On Friday gas flows to Europe were just short of their maximum capacity, at 108.4 million cubic metres of gas, according to a Gazprom spokesman.
German subsidiaries
As Europe scrambles to lock down alternative sources of fossil fuels to backtrack from years of building increased dependency on Russia, state-controlled energy company Gazprom announced it would sell its German subsidiaries.
The looming departure came a day after rumours that Berlin was considering nationalising parts of Gazprom and Rosneft, also state-controlled, to secure energy supply.
The Kremlin protested that a nationalisation of its gas companies would be a breach of international law.
Gazprom Germania’s main business is the trade, transport and storage of natural gas and it was unclear on Friday what consequences, if any, the sale would have for energy deliveries to Germany, which draws about 55 per cent of its gas from Russia.
A subsidiary of Gazprom Germania, Astora GmbH, controls many of the country’s largest gas storage facilities. One in Rehden, near the Dutch border, accounts for a fifth of Germany’s total gas storage capacity.
Bought from BASF seven years ago, the storage facility is as big as 910 soccer fields and, at full capacity, can deliver enough gas to supply two million households for a year.
Of late, levels of gas in Russian-owned storage facilities have dropped as low as four per cent, part of a trend of under-filling this winter that analysts blame for contributing to soaring prices even before the invasion began.
The sale will not affect other Gazprom subsidiaries in western Europe, including a separate Swiss-based consortium that has a controlling stake in the two Nord Stream pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea.
As tensions built with Moscow over its energy bills, Germany’s economics ministry triggered the first of a three-stage energy emergency plan this week and warned that Berlin would resist Russian attempts to “blackmail” Europe.
EU countries are drawing up a fresh package of sanctions on Russia that is expected to close loopholes and add new names to the list of individuals subject to asset freezes and travel bans as soon as next week.
