President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that Russia will demand “unfriendly’’ countries pay for Russian natural gas exports only in rubles from now on. In Europe, there was the first reaction of one of the partners of Russian Gazprom to Putin'sstatement.
The Austrian OMV will not switch to rubles and will continue to pay in euros. This is reported by Russian propaganda resources.
Putin told a meeting with government officials that “a number of Western countries made illegitimate decisions on the so-called freezing of the Russian assets, effectively drawing a line over reliability of their currencies, undermining the trust for those currencies.”
“It makes no sense whatsoever,” Putin added, “to supply our goods to the European Union, the United States and receive payment in dollars, euros and a number of other currencies.”
As a result, he said he was announcing “measures” to switch to payments for “our natural gas, supplied to so-called unfriendly countries” in Russian rubles.
In comments to Austrian TV station Puls 24, OMV CEO Alfred Stern said that the company would "of course" continue to pay in euros, as there is no other contractual base, the head of the company replied for Putin's statement.
"We don't have any other basis for the contract. I wouldn't be able to do otherwise," he added.
He said that while he had seen the press reports about Putin's announcement, "no-one has called us, we have our existing contracts and that's not what's agreed in them".
Bilateral agreements specify the currency of payment, that is, the euro. It is a unilateral change of the contracts, which may lead to the termination of the contract or to claims in the Stockholm arbitration.
But still, Europe depends on Russian gas and will not be able to abandon completely in a short period of time. Under such conditions, most consumers can enter into contracts in rubles.
"Payment for gas in rubles is technically possible, but this will force the EU to circumvent its own sanctions and fac ilitate discussions about the embargo (Russian oil, - ed.)," said the head of the Bundestag committee, commenting on Putin's statement on the transfer of gas payment in rubles.