The Ukrainian national energy company Naftogaz is claiming $6.2 billion compensation from Gazprom in a lawsuit filed with the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal.
The lawsuit claiming retroactive revision of the contract with "Gazprom" on gas supply and transit from 2009-2019 years: "to recognize that the transit tariff in the contract shall be amended in such a way as it will be explained in further written statements of "Naftogaz" in accordance with the basic principles of the Swedish contract law."
"The provisional amount of claims is $6.2 billion. On November 28, 2014 Gazprom has replied to a request for arbitration," RIA Novosti cited Gazprom's report of the IFRS.
The hearing will start no earlier than February-March 2016, Tass reports.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Energy Strategy, Alexey Belogoriev said in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza that to make any predictions about the court's decision on this point is very difficult. "I think anything is possible in the current political environment. In fact, from a legal point of view, Gazprom's position is stronger, but the political component, of course, plays an important role, and it is impossible to ensure that Gazprom will defend its position," the expert said.
As for the possible losses for "Gazprom" and the contesting party finance, Belogoriev said that: "The amount of the claim is very large, I doubt that even if Gazprom loses, it would be charged the entire amount: most likely, only part of it. But in any case, the loss of several billion dollars is a significant blow to the company concidering the current fall of oil prices and the expected fall in gas prices. Another thing is that in previous years Gazprom listed its customers through the conversion price for the previous years in the form of so-called retroactive payments within a few billion dollars. That is, such a situation was there before, but not in the form of fines that are imposed by the court."
Answering a question about the impact of a possible loss of money on filling the Russian budget, the expert noted that Gazprom is still a public-private company."Moreover, the company is profitable, and in recent years it has been a company with the highest profit. Therefore Gazprom has no grounds to ask for help from the government. A fortiori the government probably would not help," Alex Belogoriev concluded.
Senior analyst of "Uralsib Capital" Alexei Kokin, in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza suggested that the claim would be considered for a very long time, and in the near future it is unlikely that we will see any movement.
"It is very difficult to comment on the prospects, since there are too many factors in the relations of Gazprom and Naftogaz. Perhaps this lawsuit will generally be withdrawn if the parties find a compromise," the expert suggested.
As to a possible victory by the Ukrainian side, analysts believe that charging the full amount in the near future is not a very realistic option. "Therefore, it is better not to be considered. This amount is greatly exaggerated and represents nothing but Naftogaz's wishes. I think there may be some penalties, but only if they would be much less than Naftogaz required, and those would not be charged until the end of 2016," Alexei Kokin summed up.
