NEWS: Russia
Russia will not cut off gas supplies yet in rouble payment row.

Rus­sia has said it’ll not cut off gas exports to Europe yet in a stand­off over its demand to be paid in rou­bles.
Russ­ian head of state Vladimir Putin inked a decree on Thurs­day stat­ing buy­ers must pay in rou­bles through Russ­ian bank accounts from Friday.

The Krem­lin said this would not affect ship­ments which were for­mer­ly paid for, with pay­ments for deliv­er­ies after 1 April due inmid-April at the fore­most.
The coun­try is seek­ing to shore up the rou­ble as West­ern sanc­tions suck.

“Does this mean that if there’s no attes­ta­tion in rou­bles, also gas sup­plies will be cut off from 1 April? No, it does­n’t, and it does not fol­low from the decree,“Kremlin prophet Dmit­ry Peskov said.
The EU said it was talk­ing to ener­gy com­pa­nies about how to pay for gas.

Ditte Juul Jor­gensen, the direc­tor gen­er­al of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion ener­gy direc­torate, twit­tered that the EU was” work­ing near­ly with mem­ber coun­tries and dri­vers. to estab­lish a com­mon approach on cur­ren­cy pay­ments for gas con­tracts with Rus­sia”.
Since Rus­sia raid­ed Ukraine West­ern nations have placed war­rants on Russ­ian com­pa­nies and individualities.

Unlike the US and Cana­da, the EU has not placed bans on oil or gas, as its mem­ber nations are heav­i­ly reliant on it.

Rus­sia sup­plies the Euro­pean Union (EU) with about a third of its gas and can­vas sig­nif­i­cances which are sub­stan­tial­ly paid for in euros and dollars.

The EU has no easy back­ups if sup­plies are dis­in­te­grat­ed, but at the same time, Rus­sia is mak­ing€ 400m ($ 445m) per day from gas deals to the bloc and it has ver­i­ta­bly many options for rerout­ing this force to oth­er requests.

Mem­ber states in the EU have been on alert for any dis­lo­ca­tion to Russ­ian gas sig­nif­i­cances as pres­sure con­tin­ues between Rus­sia and the West over the Ukraine irruption.

On Wednes­day, Ger­many and Aus­tria took the first way towards gas rationing. Ger­many prompt­ed con­sumers and com­pa­nies to reduce con­sump­tion in expec­ta­tion of pos­si­ble under­sup­plies, while Aus­tria said it was tens­ing its mon­i­tor­ing of the gas demand.

A crunch point appeared to be in the futu­ri­ty when Moscow issued a decree on Thurs­day tak­ing for­eign buy­ers of Russ­ian gas to open rou­ble accounts from Fri­day or fur­ther threat being cut-off.

Moscow did, still, offer a mech­a­nism for buy­ers to gain rou­bles via the state- run Gazprombank.

The bank has escaped sanc­tions from the EU to allow ener­gy trad­ing to continue.

The UK has assessed war­rants on Gazprom­bank, but imports low­er than 5 of its gas from Russia.

UK and Dutch mass-mar­ket gas prices fell on Fri­day after the release that Russ­ian gas sup­plies would not be halt­ed right off.

West­bound over­flows of Russ­ian gas via major routes were steady on Friday.