Russia Cuts off Gas Supplies to Finland Over Payment Dispute
Russia’s major state-owned gas company, PJSC Gazprom, stopped gas supplies to North European Finland.
Following Russia’s unprovoked and large-scale incursion of Ukraine, the Kremlin earlier asked its clients from ‘unfriendly countries and territories’ to pay for Russian gas in roubles. So, in the latest escalation of an energy payment clash with European states, Russia’s major state-owned gas company, PJSC Gazprom, stopped gas supplies to North European Finland.
Following Russia’s unprovoked and large-scale incursion on Ukraine, the Kremlin asked its clients from ‘unfriendly countries and territories to pay for Russian gas in rubles. So, in the latest escalation of an energy payment clash with European states. pic.twitter.com/r7pPOkA6qv
Gazprom, a Russian multinational energy corporation headquartered in the Lakhta Center in Saint Petersburg, confirmed that it had completely halted Russian gas supplies to Finland at 07:00 AM local time on Saturday.
And Gasum Oy, a Finnish state-owned energy firm headquartered in Espoo, Finland, which imports and sells the country’s natural gas, said that Russia had cut off its gas imports to Finland at 04:00 GMT on May 21. Helsinki said that all the Russian gas transfers had halted, but said there would be no interruption to its customers.
Finland has been refusing to accept Moscow’s demand to pay for deliveries of gas in Russian currency. But Russia’s gas cutoff also follows an official declaration that Helsinki will join the 30-member military alliance. Furthermore, in spite of the brutal invasion of the post-Soviet state of Ukraine, Moscow continues deliveries of its natural gas to several Western nations.
‘unfriendly countries’
After European powers levied economic costs on Putin’s Russia, Moscow announced a list of ‘unfriendly states’ – European Union members countries, New Zealand, South Korea, Norway, North Macedonia, San Marino, Singapore, the United States of America, Taiwan, Switzerland, Ukraine, Japan, Australia, Andorra, Monaco, Albania, Great Britain, including Jersey, Anguilla, Gibraltar, British Virgin Islands, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Canada, Micronesia, and Montenegro – must pay for natural gas supplies in roubles, a retaliatory move which the European Union considers blackmail.
Additionally, a Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said Finland depended on Moscow for about sixty-eight percent of Russian gas consumption in 2020. But, according to the Brussels-headquartered association of Europe’s transmission system operators, ENTSOG, Moscow’s natural gas exports represent only three percent of the Nordic state’s energy mix – a group of various primary energy sources from which secondary energy for direct use.
Russia Cuts off Gas Supplies to Finland Over Payment Dispute Source: Web
On May 19, Olga Vaisanen, the Vice-President of Gasum, told the media that the North European country of Finland is also getting natural gas through its Baltic connection via Estonia, a North European state bordering the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. And the pipeline also permits it to draw on underground storage in Latvia, a country on the Baltic Sea between Estonia and Lithuania.
