Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spînu, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, says that Chisinau will sue the Russian Gazprom concern for non-fulfilment of the contract, noting that the authorities will demand “including collateral damages”. The statement was made in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

Asked if there is a signed document in which Gazprom agrees that Chisinau will hand over all gas to Tiraspol, Andrei Spînu said there is no such document.

“(…) Gazprom can do anything. In the last year they have shown us that they are capable of anything. When you ask me what Gazprom can do, I have no answer. They have cut off gas to all of Europe. They shut off gas to the Bulgarians, the Italians, the Germans. They turned off the tap to Ukraine, they disconnected Poland, Finland (…). That they will send us a letter asking us for more – that can happen at any time, no matter what we decide. Their actions have gone beyond the economic and trade framework. But to ask us to pay for the gas consumed by those on the left bank of the Dniester they cannot. It is contractually regulated consumption on the left bank and consumption on the right bank of the Dniester. No one in Chisinau will ever agree to pay for gas consumed on the left bank of the Dniester.

We have a contract with Gazprom that specifies the volume of gas that the Russians must deliver to us, the formula for calculating the price and the method of payment. We have paid everything. The energy crisis that Moldova is going through now is generated by Gazprom-Kremlin. And I want to be heard when I say that. If this concern honoured its contractual commitments to Moldova today, the energy crisis would disappear and everyone would have gas and energy. The fact that we have to buy gas and electricity on the market is Gazprom’s fault, and our lawyers are already working out the details in order to take the Russian concern to court for non-fulfilment of the contract. And we will also ask for collateral damages, because, because of them, we had to reallocate money from other segments, to take loans (…). We have signed a contract with Gazprom and we have relied on that contract. We are not in October 2021 when our contract with Gazprom expired. Then they could have told us they no longer wanted to sign with us. But now we have a contract in place, and Gazprom has not asked to terminate it. Nor has it asked for a decrease in volume. Nothing. They simply ignore their commitments. And it will pay for it,” Spînu told the source.

Recently, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Moldovagaz Vadim Ceban mentioned in a TV show of the N4 TV channel that by the end of 2022, representatives of Moldovagaz and the Russian Gazprom will have another meeting, during which they will discuss, among other things, the “recovery of full deliveries” of natural gas under the contract signed in autumn 2021.

“If not this week, next week (a visit to Russia would follow, ed.). I am constantly continuing my work in the field of full recovery of supplies in Moldova,” Vadim Ceban explained.

The head of Moldovagaz said that at least by 1 April Moldova will have a stable situation on the gas market.

The state-owned Energocom company signed on Saturday, December 3, a contract with the Cuciurgan Thermoelectric Power Plant (MGRES), controlled by a Russian state-owned company, for the delivery of electricity for the month of December, thus the entire amount of natural gas delivered by Gazprom goes to the Transnistrian region.

In exchange for the 5.7 million cubic metres of gas delivered by Gazprom, the right bank will purchase about 204 thousand MW in December at a price of $73 per MWh.

The day before this announcement, on 2 December, Energocom announced that it had imported 4.3 million cubic metres of natural gas from the Mediterranean via the Greece-Bulgaria interconnector. According to Energocom, the purchase was made to test how this corridor works in reverse.