Report: EU firms force Gazprom to pay fines as transit difficult

PRAGUE, Mar 16 (PRIME) -- European firms use Russian gas giant Gazprom’s conflict with its main transit partner, Ukraine, to force it to pay them fines by ordering more gas than usual, knowing it is unable to pump more gas than was initially contracted, the Czech Republic’s daily Hospodarske noviny reported on Monday.

“The fine may equal the full cost of the under-supplied fuel,” a source in a Czech gas trader told the daily. If every European partner of Gazprom had used the possibility, the Russian gas giant could have paid hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in fines, as only in October–December 2014 Gazprom undersupplied about half of the ordered gas.

Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Germany’s RWE, confirmed that Gazprom has already paid a fine to the German company. “Gazprom did not fulfill its contracted liabilities, we received compensations,” he told Hospodarske noviny without elaborating.

Supplies of Russian gas to the Czech Republic only fell by about a third on the year, which cost Gazprom 15 billion Czech korunas, or U.S. $625 million, the daily said without mentioning the period of supplies and adding that Gazprom has revised its strategy of low supplies to the European countries and fully opened valves recently.

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