Russia has ceased gas supplies to Ørsted and Shell Europe as a result of increasing tensions.
What are Ørsted and Shell Europe?
Ørsted is Denmark’s main energy group, while Shell Europe is the company in charge of supplying energy to Germany.
This is a sanction imposed by Russia against countries that have been “unfriendly” after Russia’s war campaign in Ukraine, namely the countries of the European Union, which had applied economic sanctions against Russia in the previous months.
The total suspension of supplies to these two companies was confirmed on June 1, as they both refused to pay for fuel in rubles, as demanded by Russia.
These are not the first companies to refuse this demand, nor are they the first to have their gas supplies cut off by Russia; in previous months, this had already happened to customers in Poland, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Finland.
In 2021, Russian gas company Gazprom came to supply Ørsted, accounting for about two-thirds of Denmark’s total gas consumption. While the supply it provided to Shell for Germany was around 1.2 billion cubic meters of gas per year, it is expected to supply around 1.2 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
The measure devised by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is in order to mitigate the economic sanctions to which that country is subjected in retaliation for its military campaign in Ukraine.
This is why companies that want gas supplies from Gazprom must open two special accounts in Gazprombank, and pay for the supply, first in dollars or euros in the first account, and after the money is converted into rubles, it is transferred to the second one.
Internationally, as a result of the agreement reached by the European Union countries to partially ban imports of crude oil from Russia, the price of crude oil has risen sharply.
This has led to increased inflationary pressure, affecting mainly food and energy prices worldwide.
A collateral effect
Macky Sall, chairman of the African Union, highlighted the major impact that these sanctions against Russia are having on the food security of African countries.
