Russia Warns West: Gas Bills in Roubles Are Just Days Away
(Reuters) - Russia warned the West on Friday that billing in roubles for billions of dollars of natural gas exports to Europe could be just days away, Moscow's toughest response yet to crippling sanctions imposed by the West for the invasion of Ukraine.
With the Russian economy facing its gravest crisis since the years that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hit back at the West, ordering that Russian gas exports should be paid for in roubles.
Putin said the West had declared economic war by freezing Russian assets, and so Russia saw no point in receiving dollars or euros for Russian exports anymore.
The Kremlin on Friday said Putin had ordered Gazprom, the world's biggest natural gas company, which supplies 40% of Europe's gas, to accept export payments in roubles, and that it had just four days left to work out how.
"There is an instruction to Gazprom from the president of the Russian Federation to accept payments in roubles," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "This information will be brought to the purchasers of Gazprom products."
Gas buyers have been seeking guidance on how they could get the roubles to make any such payments, given the extent of the sanctions on Russia.
"Rouble payments are somewhere between very difficult and not possible for the majority of European buyers to organise, and certainly not at short notice," Jonathan Stern, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told Reuters.
If Gazprom insisted on rouble payments and stopped deliveries if payments were not made in roubles, "then in my view this would be a violation of contract terms," he said.
Payments in roubles would shore up the Russian currency, which has plummeted since the invasion on Feb. 24. Putin's speech lifted the rouble 9% against the dollar on Wednesday.
Meanwhile Dutch gas prices, the European benchmark, have spiked due to concerns over whether countries will be willing or even able to pay in roubles.
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