Gazprom Hits Out at EU Restrictions
Russian giant Gazprom has hit out against the European Union and its regulations, saying the restrictions on the company are affecting its operations.
Speaking at the European Business Congress in Slovenia, CEO of Gazprom Alexey Miller said that bureaucracy was stifling both the Nord Stream and South Stream projects, preventing both from operating at optimal level.
"Unfortunately, with the issue of new infrastructure projects, we are up against a wall of bureaucracy," Interfax news agency reports him as sayings. "Bringing the necessary volumes of gas to EU borders, we now cannot count on using adequate transport capacity to deliver these volumes to the destinations where the gas changes ownership and is placed in the European gas distribution network."
Mr. Miller once again pointed to the restrictions imposed on the company from the Third Energy Package, a package which the company has frequently criticised in the past.
"Citing implementation of the Third Energy Package, European and national bodies nodding to each other are preventing us from using all of the receiving capacity, even when there are no other contenders for it. There can be no economic sense in this," he said.
Today also sees head of Contract Structuring and Price Formation Directorate at Gazprom Export Sergei Komlev criticising EU regulations, this time in relation to the Energy Charter Treaty and its Secretariat.
At a separate conference, he said the Charter had frustrated the dispute between Russia and Ukraine.
"Russia was disappointed by the reaction of the Energy Charter Secretariat: when the gas crisis was looming and the energy charter had to react one way or another, it just said that the company member of the energy charter has to behave and even if there is no sales contract it has to keep its obligation to deliver gas," New Europe reports him as saying.
"It was not Russia that stopped the pipeline, it was Ukraine. On 6 January [2009] there was no deliveries to Europe and we had to react and shut down deliveries to Ukraine. The behaviour of the energy charter was running against its principles and we were strongly disappointed."