Austrian OMV group has no intention of limiting Russian gas purchases, CEO says

Austrian energy group OMV has no intention of stopping its purchases of gas from Russia. Its CEO, Alfred Stern, told the Financial Times. The company will buy gas from Russia’s Gazprom under a contract that runs until 2040, he said. Stern added, however, that the company is trying to diversify its gas suppliers.

OMV, which supplies around 30 percent of the Austrian market, signed a gas supply contract with Russia’s Gazprom in 2018. „As long as Gazprom supplies us…, we will take this volume (of gas) from Gazprom,“ Stern said. The European Union has not imposed sanctions on gas supplies, and restricting purchases is, according to Stern, solely a matter of political decisions. He warned, however, that prices could rise if such a significant supplier were excluded.

Unlike Germany and Czechia, Austria has cut its purchases of Russian gas only slightly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year. It is acting in a similar way to Hungary. This winter, Vienna was sending Russia more than one billion euros (around 24 billion crowns) a month for gas purchases, the Financial Times reported today.