Claims that Russia is deliberately causing natural gas shortages in Europe are baseless, according to Sergey Kupriyanov, spokesman for energy major Gazprom.
“All the allegations against Russia and Gazprom relating to delivering an insufficient amount of gas to the European market are absolutely groundless, unacceptable and untrue. In other words, it is a pack of lies,” he said in an interview with the Russia-24 TV channel.
Kupriyanov added that Gazprom is ready to deliver additional gas volumes to Europe under the terms of existing contracts, with the costs of these supplies to be lower than spot market prices.
Last week, European prices for natural gas topped $2,150 per thousand cubic meters for the first time ever, reaching nearly $210 per megawatt-hour in household terms. Gazprom’s average contractual price for European countries is less than $300 per thousand cubic meters.
“All problems in Western Europe are created by the Europeans, they shouldn’t blame Gazprom for this,” the spokesman pointed out.
According to Kupriyanov, some countries, like Germany and France, pumped out the gas volumes they had contracted for 2021, but have not submitted requests for additional supplies.
“Gazprom books shipment capacity in accordance with the number of those requests rather than the other way around,” he added.
He pointed out that this year Gazprom delivered 50.2 billion cubic meters of gas, 5.3% more than in 2020. Meanwhile, the supply volumes delivered to Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Denmark, Finland, and Poland in 2021 also exceeded the figures recorded last year.
Some European officials have repeatedly blamed Gazprom and the Russian government for being behind the current energy crisis. The latest accusations followed last week’s stoppage of gas shipments through the Yamal-Europe pipeline. Gazprom says it stopped supplies after Germany did not book additional gas shipments via the route.
On Friday, Gazprom and its customers, including Germany’s Uniper SE and RWE AG, confirmed that the Russian company had fulfilled its agreements this year, with the energy major stating that it delivers gas to Europe “fully in compliance with the current contract obligations.”
During Thursday’s national press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Western leaders of lying by blaming Moscow for rising gas prices. “Gazprom is delivering the volume requested by its partners in full, in accordance with existing contracts,” said Putin.
The Russian president warned European countries about the threat of destroying the long-term contract system for gas supplies.
