“If Gazprom wants to continue delivering these volumes of gas to where they went via OPAL, but in a shorter way, the Ukrainian and Slovakian gas transmission systems can easily cope with this,” Kobolev wrote on Facebook.
On September 10, an EU court overturned the decision of the European Commission to change the regime for using the OPAL gas pipeline. In October 2016, the European Commission approved the expansion of Gazprom’s access to OPAL, while previously the company had the right to download 50%.
The head of the Ministry of Energy of Russia Alexander Novak said that the situation with the OPAL pipeline will affect negotiations with the EU and Ukraine on gas.
The Director General of the National Energy Security Fund Konstantin Simonov in an interview with Nation News commented on the decision of the EU court.
The Bundestag said that the decision of the EU court on the OPAL gas pipeline is political in nature and was adopted with the aim of partially ousting Russia from the natural gas market.