Russian gas | Gazprom suspends gas supplies to Latvia

The Russian gas consortium Gazprom announced this Saturday immediate suspension of gas supply to the neighbor latvia. “Today Gazprom suspended gas supplies to Latvia in the framework of the July request due to violations of gas selection conditions“, says the Russian corporation in a brief statement.

This occurs one day after the Baltic country will announce the resumption of imports of Russian gas through an intermediary company. At the time, Latvia and the other two Baltic republics, Estonia and Lithuania, refused to accept Russia’s demand to pay for gas in rubles. In mid-July the Latvian Parliament adopted the decision to completely ban the import of gas from the Russian giant as of January 1, 2023.

Latvia has a large underground gas reservoir in the city of Incukalns, operated by Conexus Baltic Grid, a unified gas storage and distribution network for the three Baltic countries. According to Gazprom accounts, Latvia received in 2019 and 2020 more than 1.6 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Contractual obligations

Gazprom on Wednesday cut gas pumping to Germany to a fifth of the capacity of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, a decision that Berlin considers a “war strategy”.

The Russian President, Vladimir Putininsists that Gazprom will comply with its contractual obligations, while the company wields “technical reasons” for the cuts, for which it blames the German company Siemens, to which the compressor station’s turbines belong.

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This Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovstated that the twin Nord Stream 2 pipeline “can fully meet the needs of Europe”but stressed that the Europeans “do not allow its operation for political reasons.”

The Nord Strem 2 was never launched because Germany froze its certification on February 22 of this year, the day after Russia recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Luhansk and Donetskand two days before Russia launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine.