Russian state-owned natural gas company Gazprom has suspended gas supplies to Italy. This is due to problems regarding the Austrian regulatory changes at the end of September. The European energy crisis has worsened.
Italy appears to be the only country affected by the supply disruption. Italy is supplied by Gazprom via a pipeline through Austria. A spokesman for OMV, which imports gas from Russian to Austria, said that the allocation of Russian gas was higher than recently.
While Italy is reducing its dependence on Russian gas, the one-day outage highlights how vulnerable European countries are to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s moves to cut energy supplies to the continent. This comes after a major gas leak on Nord Stream, a major pipeline to Europe, which some countries have denounced as “sabotage”.
Gazprom said it was in talks with Italian gas buyers to resolve the issue. Italian energy company ENI confirmed the outage and said it was in contact with Gazprom.
Austria’s energy ministry said Gazprom had not approved a contractual change to reflect the technical rule adjustments it usually makes at the start of the year. The government says it is working on the technical side of the issue.
news-rsf-original-reference paywall">Original title:
Russia Ends Gas Supply to Italy From Saturday, Eni Says (1)
news-rsf-original-reference paywall">Gazprom Halts Gas Supplies to Italy in Latest Energy Battle （抜粋）
(Additional opinion of the Austrian Ministry of Energy in the last paragraph. The article before the update corrected the country name “Australia” to “Austria” in the first paragraph)
