Finland’s Gasum halted all liquefied gas purchases from Russia on July 26, as it previously announced, replacing it with Norwegian gas, the company said in a press release.
Sanctions issued by the EU on 24 June prohibit the purchase or import of liquefied natural gas originating from Russia through European Union terminals that are not connected to the EU gas network. The prohibition went into force on 26 July, which means that Gasum will no longer import LNG from Russia.
“Gasum has a long-term LNG supply contract with Russian gas company Gazprom Export which was concluded before 2022 [the sanctions enabled it to honor contracts signed before that]. The LNG supply contract is a so-called take-or-pay agreement, which means that Gasum has been obligated to pay for a certain amount of gas each year to Gazprom Export, whether it is collected or not. The sanctions adopted by the EU do not allow Gasum to terminate its agreement with Gazprom Export but constitute a force majeure on the purchase or import of Russian LNG to off-grid terminals,” the Finnish company said.
Gasum said was buying LNG from a number of different sources, for example it has a long-term sourcing agreement with the Risavika liquefaction plant in Norway.
Gasum has also previously had a long-term pipeline natural gas supply contract with Gazprom Export. No pipeline-led natural gas has been coming from Russia since May 2022 and Gasum terminated the contract in May 2023.
Gasum purchased LNG from Novatek’s Cryogas-Vysotsk under an agreement with Gazprom Export, as Cryogas-Vysotsk does not have the legal right to export the energy source.
Novatek found other buyers when Gasum earlier briefly stopped buying LNG owing to complications with payments, Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson had said.
Cryogas-Vysotsk has capacity of 770,000 tonnes of LNG per year.
