Austria’s top energy official ordered a review of the country’s natural gas contract with Gazprom PJSC after Russian imports surged at the end of last year.
Almost two years after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia covered 98% of Austria’s gas demand in December, underscoring the failure of the central European nation’s economy to diversify away from its biggest supplier.
“Our dependence on Russian natural gas endangers our country’s prosperity, security and future,” Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler said Monday. “We cannot simply accept that the proportion of Russian gas is increasing instead of decreasing.”
Gewessler said she’ll appoint experts to examine whether the contract between state-owned OMV AG and Gazprom can be abrogated. Austria is currently obliged to pay for any Russian fuel reaching its border under a long-term contract running until 2040.
Altering contract would require a new law backed by a super majority in Austria’s parliament. With national elections scheduled for later this year, the biggest opposition parties said they’re not inclined to support Gewessler’s proposal.
The proposal threatens to “harm our own population without changing Russia’s behavior,” Austria’s Freedom Party, which currently leads in national polls, wrote in a statement. The opposition Social Democrats similarly wrote that their party isn’t ready to support the Gewessler’s proposal.
For more than half a century, Austrian households and industry have been locked into agreements first signed with the Soviet Union. Fuel shipped through pipelines from Russia tends to be cheaper than liquefied natural gas and those long-term Gazprom contracts give businesses certainty about their energy costs.
