After Vladimir Putin's announcement that Russian gas could only be paid for in rubles, companies and banks have been puzzling over how this should work in practice.

On the one hand, they must not and do not want to violate the sanctions, on the other hand, they would have to get rubles somehow if they want to continue buying gas from Russia.

What exactly the new regulations should look like is not yet clear.

Putin had instructed the central bank to work out details within a week.

In this respect, the speculations about how things will continue are still far apart.

Helmut Buender

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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Bernd Freytag

Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.

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According to the Swiss bank Vontobel, around 60 percent of Russian gas deliveries are currently paid for in euros and 40 percent in dollars.

The question is whether it would even be possible to change the payment currency at short notice for some of the long-term supply contracts, says Kerstin Hottner, a commodities expert at Vontobel.

Hoping for politics

This question should arise immediately, especially for energy suppliers and particularly energy-intensive companies.

The energy supplier ENBW, for example, whose Leipzig subsidiary VNG is one of the largest gas traders in Germany, referred to politics the day after the ruble demand.

To date, VNG's direct gas supply contracts have been paid for in euros.

It remains to be seen how things will continue.

"We fully support the previous and, in our view, prudent measures taken by the federal government," said a spokesman.

Russia's demand is the answer to the sanctions decided by politicians.

Therefore, it is primarily up to politicians to decide on a coordinated approach.

According to the company, there is no way out for German industry to order directly from the only major German oil and gas company, Wintershall Dea, and to pay there in euros.

According to a spokesman, Wintershall, a subsidiary of BASF, produces locally in Siberia.

The gas is sold to Gazprom straight from the well, so to speak, and customers can only conclude direct supply contracts with the Russians.

Things are different when it comes to gas production in other countries, such as Norway, where Wintershall also produces.

The most important direct natural gas customer from Russia in Germany is the energy group Uniper.

From there, nothing was initially heard on Thursday about how the company intends to deal with the ruble regulation.

So far, the concern transfers its euro payments to a euro account specified by Gazprom.

The energy supplier Eon, from which Uniper emerged a few years ago, has no direct contracts with Russia, but buys its gas wholesale in Europe.

It is assumed that it will simply continue according to the previous modalities, the company said.

However, among the partners are also Gazprom subsidiaries such as Wingas.

“Rub market pretty dry”

In the banks, however, the question arises as to where they could get the rubles for their customers if Russia got serious.

"Since the market for the ruble has pretty much dried up, only the Russian central bank could probably provide enough rubles for the oil and gas bills," says Rolf Schäffer from the economics department of Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW).

But that would mean that the central bank “sets” the course.

This would then probably be chosen in such a way that it would correspond to the previous price in dollars – the currency, which had been badly battered in the course of the war sanctions, would thus be artificially strengthened.

"In our opinion, the whole thing is probably pure propaganda: if the ruble rate chosen by the central bank were too high, it would not do Russia any good, because it could not buy anything abroad with rubles anyway, but would drive customers away even more quickly," says Schäffer.

But Russia would look incredibly “strong” with an artificially high ruble exchange rate.

“It would then be like it used to be in the Soviet Union.

The Fed's dollar accounts would not be affected by any of this.

The dollars would continue to flow indirectly as before.”