2022–2023 Russia–European Union gas dispute

In June, Gazprom claimed it was obliged to cut the flow of gas to Germany by more than half, as a result of such sanctions that prevented the Russian company from receiving its turbine component from Canada.

[16][17][18] In April 2022, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said "the era of Russian fossil fuels in Europe will come to an end".

[20][18] On 23 March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced payments for Russian pipeline gas would be switched from "currencies that had been compromised" (that is, US dollar and euro) to payments in roubles when the transaction involved a country formally designated "unfriendly" previously, which included all European Union states; on 28 March, he ordered the Central Bank of Russia, the government, and Gazprom to present proposals by 31 March for gas payments in rubles from these "unfriendly countries".

[21][22][23] President Putin's move was construed to be aimed at forcing European companies to directly prop up the Russian currency as well as bringing Russia's Central Bank back into the global financial system after the sanctions had nearly cut it off from financial markets, essentially circumventing sanctions.

[24] ING bank's chief economist, Carsten Brzeski, told Deutsche Welle he thought the gas-for-ruble demand was "a smart move".

[24] At the end of April 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the $300 billion of Gazprom's funds that had in effect been "stolen" by the "Western 'friends'" were actually the funds they had paid for Russia's gas, which meant that all those years they had been consuming the Russian gas free of charge; he thus made a point that the new payment system was designed to preclude "the continuation of the brazen thievery those countries were involved in".

[25][clarification needed] On 28 March, Robert Habeck, the German Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, announced that the G7 countries had rejected the Russian President's demand that payment for gas be made in rubles.

[30] Russia's TASS reported that President Putin had a phone call with Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz to "inform him on the decision to switch to payments in rubles for gas".

[32] According to Olaf Scholz's office, President Vladimir Putin told the German Chancellor that European companies could continue paying in euros or dollars.

[33] On 31 March, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree – decree 172 – that obligated, starting 1 April, purchasers of Russian pipeline gas from countries on Russia's Unfriendly Countries List[34] to make their payments for Russian gas through a facility run by Russia's Gazprombank, a subsidiary of Gazprom.

[35][36][37] To pay for gas, purchaser companies from "unfriendly countries" would be required to open two accounts at Gazprombank and transfer foreign currency in which they previously made payments into one of them,[38][35] which Gazprombank would then sell on the Moscow stock exchange for rubles that are deposited into the second (foreign-purchaser owned) ruble-denominated account[39] (this currency conversion would be done in Russia).

Despite this, the obligatory new payment mechanism introduced by decree 172 has been colloquially referred to as a "demand to pay in rubles" by many media outlets.

On 29 April 2022, a spokesperson for the German Economy Ministry said a payment through an account (such as stipulated by decree 172) is in line with sanctions when (1) “contracts have been fulfilled with payment in euros or dollars",[42] with a government source clarifying further that (2) "it was irrelevant in which country [... that] account is opened [at a bank] as long as the bank in question was not on any sanctions list.

[44] The following day, Gazprom announced that it had "completely suspended gas supplies" to Poland's PGNiG and Bulgaria's Bulgargaz "due to absence of payments in roubles".

[46] The announcement of the suspension caused natural gas prices to surge[36] and the Russian ruble to reach a two-year-high against the Euro in Moscow trade.

[51] On 14 June 2022, Gazprom announced it would be slashing gas flow via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, due to what it claimed was Siemens’ failure to return compressor units on time that had been sent off to Canada for repair.

[61] With European policy-makers deciding in March 2022 to replace Russian fossil fuel imports with other fossil fuels imports and European coal energy production,[62][63] as well as due to Russia being "a key supplier" of materials used for "clean energy technologies", the reactions to the war were projected in March 2022 to have an overall negative impact on the climate emissions pathway.

[65] A fully open study from Zero Lab at Princeton University published in July 2022 and based on the GenX framework concluded that reliance on Russia gas could end by October 2022 under the three core scenarios they investigated – which ranged from high coal usage to accelerated renewables deployment.

[69] As of September 2022, Norway, the second largest non-EU provider of gas to the EU after Russia for several decades, has been constrained by its pipeline network's structural (maximum) capacities.

[74] On 20 June 2022, Dutch climate and energy minister Rob Jetten announced that the Netherlands would remove all restrictions on the operation of coal-fired power stations until at least 2024 in response to Russia's refusal to export natural gas to the country.

[82][83][needs update] The European Energy ministers agreed, on 19 December 2022, on a price cap for natural gas at €180 per megawatt-hour.

[91] EU autumn gas storage goals were achieved early in 2022 and 2023, and levels were at a record high of 59% at the end of winter on 1 April 2024.

The Moldovan prime minister accused Russia of provoking a humanitarian crisis in the region in order to destabilise the pro-European government.