The Austrian state-owned energy and chemical industry group OMV announced that Gazprom will stop gas deliveries to Austria from Saturday. OMV’s spokesperson told the French news agency AFP that the Russian company informed the Austrian side about the suspension on Friday. One of the main antecedents of this is that the court awarded the OMV group 242 million dollars in damages against Gazprom. OMV plans to use this amount to cover future gas deliveries from Russia.
– Russia is again using energy as a weapon – Austrian Minister of Environment and Energy Leonore Gewessler. Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who spoke on the matter, also held a press conference and emphasized that the country’s gas reservoirs are 93 percent full, and that Vienna is prepared to cut off Russian gas, which can be expected since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022. According to his minister, Austria’s energy supply is secured through full reservoirs and pipelines in neighboring Italy and Germany.
Meanwhile, Vienna-based energy regulator Energie-Control Austria announced that Austria’s energy supply is no longer dependent on Russian gas. Alfons Haber, the head of the authority, said that, unlike Germany and other EU member states, Austria covered about 80 percent of its gas needs from Russian sources this year, but now it has found other possible delivery routes.
– Households will not be left without heating this winter or the next
said Haber. According to him, a temporary price increase of around ten percent can be expected after the contracts between Kyiv and Moscow concerning the transit of Russian gas to Ukraine expire in December. However, the price change will not reach the level of 2022, when gas prices across Europe exploded after the Russian aggression.
Hungary exports a lot of gas thanks to Russian imports, but it is not clear whether we will win on deliveries.
Source: nepszava.hu
