Gazprom decides not to hurry with the payment of $2.56 billion to Ukraine's Naftogaz
Russian Gazprom is in no hurry to pay Ukrainian Naftogaz the $2.56 billion ordered by the court because they have no guarantee that the money will be returned if the decision of the Stockholm arbitration is cancelled,s reported TASS with reference to Gazprom's Deputy Head, Sergey Kuznets.
"We believe that we just need to go a little slower. We need to get to the bottom of this affair. Let's finally put this matter to rest: who owes to whom," he noted.
According to Kuznets, the Russian company has the chance to submit the case for judicial review. "We have no confidence that if we pay the money now, we'll get it back, should the judicial decision be changed or be completely abolished, as we hope," he added.
Kuznets stated that Naftogaz is trying to accelerate the process of obtaining money through the seizure of Gazprom assets. "This does not mean that we should immediately pay. As you know, Gazprom is not satisfied with the outcome of the arbitration proceedings in Stockholm. We believe that it was carried out with procedural violations. We announced the filing of an appeal in Sweden’s Svea Court of Appeals," he concluded.
At the end of December last year, the Stockholm Arbitration court recognized Naftogaz as the guilty party in the dispute with Gazprom on gas supply contract and obliged the Ukrainian company in 2018-2019 to buy 5 billion cubic meters of gas from the Russian corporation and pay an additional $2 billion.
In a separate dispute between the two companies, the transit dispute verdict issued by the court at the end of February was not in Gazprom’s favor. The Russian company was ordered to pay $4.63 billion for failure to supply gas under transit contract. This means that Gazprom owes Naftogaz a net of $2.6 billion. The Arbitration court did not set a deadline for the payment of this amount.