Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz filed a claim with the Stockholm arbitration court last week within its lawsuit against Gazprom, arguing the Russian giant should be ordered to pay a total of $12.248 billion as compensation, Naftogaz Executive Director Yuri Vitrenko said on Monday, Deutsche Welle in Russian reported.
The bulk worth of $11.8 billion is an amount of compensation Gazprom should pay for its refusal to reconsider the tariff from March 13, 2018 until December 31, 2019, Vitrenko says. The rest of the money includes other claims by the Ukrainian company.
“The amount of $213 million (plus interest) is compensation for Gazprom’s failure to supply gas under the gas supply contract from March 2018 to September 2019 (we can add the following months later). Gazprom was committed to supply us with 4 billion cubic meters of gas in 2018 and 5 billion cubic meters of gas in 2019, but it failed to meet the commitment. Respectively, we claim compensation for the periods when we had to buy more expensive gas on the European market (which is to compensate for a margin between the contract price and the actual purchase price),” Vitrenko wrote.
Gazprom and Naftogaz of Ukraine plunged into a litigation over gas supplies and transit contracts with the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce back in 2014.
In December 2017 and February 2018, the Stockholm Arbitration Court ruled that the Russian company should pay $2.56 billion to Naftogaz. Gazprom appealed against these decisions. The Svea County Court of Appeal in Sweden is expected to issue a verdict on Gazprom’s appeal against the Arbitration’s decision on November 27.
