(English) To Counter U.S., Russia Allows Gazprom To Sell LNG 'At Any Price'

[:es]From a pure commercial perspective, the real ‘war’ being waged between Washington and the Kremlin is not over Ukraine. It’s over Europe.
Russia and the U.S. are the new titans of oil and gas. Russia wants to make sure that its investments in the far east do not eventually get undercut by the Americans selling to the Middle East and Asia. U.S. natural gas exporters are already encroaching on long-held Russian markets in Europe, particularly in countries whose governments tend to be anti-Russia.
So to retaliate from a recent five year deal signed between Poland and U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters, the Russian governent said that its state-controlled gas giant, Gazprom, can undercut the Americans in Europe by selling LNG «at any price».
The executive order, approved on Wednesday by Vladimir Putin’s administration, allows Gazprom to sell natural gas to companies engaged in the production and export of LNG starting January 1 at an «unregulated price,» the Kommersant business daily reported on Thursday.

The decree will primarily effect Gazprom’s Baltic LNG project and their Sakhalin-2 project. Gazprom is in a joint venture with Shell on the Baltic LNG facility in Leningrad. The move can be seen as a means to compete with new LNG plants in Lithuania and Poland, both of which have been receiving shipments from the Gulf of Mexico.
Gazprom was restricted to sell gas at a regulated rate to local producers of LNG, and now it can sell it for less.
In the original version of the decree, Gazprom lobbied to switch to unregulated prices with export-oriented gas chemical companies too, but was not granted this wish.
Source: Forbes[:en]From a pure commercial perspective, the real ‘war’ being waged between Washington and the Kremlin is not over Ukraine. It’s over Europe.
Russia and the U.S. are the new titans of oil and gas. Russia wants to make sure that its investments in the far east do not eventually get undercut by the Americans selling to the Middle East and Asia. U.S. natural gas exporters are already encroaching on long-held Russian markets in Europe, particularly in countries whose governments tend to be anti-Russia.
So to retaliate from a recent five year deal signed between Poland and U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters, the Russian governent said that its state-controlled gas giant, Gazprom, can undercut the Americans in Europe by selling LNG «at any price».
The executive order, approved on Wednesday by Vladimir Putin’s administration, allows Gazprom to sell natural gas to companies engaged in the production and export of LNG starting January 1 at an «unregulated price,» the Kommersant business daily reported on Thursday.

The decree will primarily effect Gazprom’s Baltic LNG project and their Sakhalin-2 project. Gazprom is in a joint venture with Shell on the Baltic LNG facility in Leningrad. The move can be seen as a means to compete with new LNG plants in Lithuania and Poland, both of which have been receiving shipments from the Gulf of Mexico.
Gazprom was restricted to sell gas at a regulated rate to local producers of LNG, and now it can sell it for less.
In the original version of the decree, Gazprom lobbied to switch to unregulated prices with export-oriented gas chemical companies too, but was not granted this wish.
Source: Forbes[:]