Austria's OMV terminated its contract with Gazprom Export

Austrian energy company OMV has terminated the contract with Russia's Gazprom Export for gas supplies to Austria due to the cessation of supplies in November. This is reported on December 12 by the press service of the company.

"OMV today announced the termination of the long-term contract for the supply of natural gas with Gazprom Export due to numerous significant violations of contractual obligations on the part of Gazprom Export", - stated on the page OMV Group Facebook (banned in Russia, belongs to the corporation Meta, recognized as extremist in Russia).

The contract between the companies of the two countries was concluded in 2006 and was supposed to operate until 2040. According to it, Gazprom sent OMV about 500 million cubic meters of gas every month, which is about 6 billion cubic meters per year. The fuel transfer to Austria was stopped in the morning of November 16.

Earlier, OMV claimed victory in an arbitration case in a dispute with Gazprom Export following the temporary suspension of supplies in the fall of 2022. In addition, the company expressed its intention to recover from Gazprom € 230 million.

Now gas storage facilities in Austria are 85% full, the company said. OMV is ready to compensate the Russian source of supply at the expense of its own production in Norway and Austria itself, as well as using "third-party gas producers and additional long-term volumes of LNG".

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Earlier, on November 21, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Russia will not do charity and supply gas to Austria after non-payment by oil and gas company OMV for the supplied fuel. The diplomat recalled that the decision to reduce gas pumping in September 2022 was conditioned by the undermining of the Nord Stream gas pipeline and the stoppage of transit through the Yamal-Europe pipeline, but these factors went unheeded.

Before that, on November 18, publicist and former Austrian presidential candidate Gerald Gros said that prices for blue fuel will rise even more in the country after the refusal of gas supplies from the Russian company Gazprom in 2025. He noted that they will rise by almost 30%.

On the same day, Maxim Chirkov, an associate professor at the Department of Economic Policy and Economic Measurements of the State University of Economics, told Izvestia that the termination of gas supplies to the OMV energy company from Russia's Gazprom Export is very negative for the Austrian economy. In addition, he did not rule out a further increase in the cost of gas on the European market.