The German energy giant Uniper went to an arbitration court on Wednesday against Gazprom seeking compensation for cuts in the supply of Russian gas to Germany through Nord Stream, which it estimates will cost at least “11.6 billion dollars” “euros ” since June.
The costs generated by the cuts are estimated at “11,600 million euros” by the company, but they could “continue to increase until the end of 2024”. Uniper has been hit hard by the reduction since June, then the total end since September, of Russian gas deliveries to Germany, via the Nord Stream pipeline, against a backdrop of war in Ukraine.
The group was the main client of Russian Gazprom in the country. To honor its contracts, it had to source gas on the spot market, where prices skyrocketed over the summer.
“Force Majeure”
In a statement broadcast by Russian news agencies, Gazprom said on Wednesday that it does not “recognize the breach of contracts and the legitimacy of the claims for damages declared by Uniper.”
The Russian company invoked a “force majeure” this summer to justify the cessation of its deliveries, without giving further details.
Invoking “the state of force majeure” allows a company to be released from its contractual obligations by exempting it from any legal liability. The mentioned event must be particularly unpredictable, beyond the control of the company and that prevents it from fulfilling its obligations. Uniper has refuted this rating since the start of the crisis.
Since then, explosions off the coast of Denmark destroyed entire sections of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines on September 26, making delivery impossible.
Contagion in energy markets
The sabotage hypothesis is favored by the Danish, German and Swedish judicial authorities, which have launched an investigation. Russia denies being at the origin of this incident, accusing the United Kingdom.
Uniper also announced on Wednesday that it had completed the sale of its Russian subsidiary Unipro, scheduled to start in the summer of 2021, to a “local buyer”, in order to “distance as much as possible” from its Russian activities.
The group, which supplied 40% of Germany’s gas supply, has suffered a record net loss of 40 billion since January as a result of this crisis.
To avoid contagion in the energy markets, the German government decided in September to nationalize the group, bailing it out through a rescue plan of several tens of billions of euros. This plan must be officially adopted by the group’s general assembly, which must meet in extraordinary session on December 19.
Source: BFM TV
