The latest U.S. sanctions against Russia are not expected to affect the purchases of Japan’s Osaka Gas of Russian LNG under its long-term contract for LNG from the Sakhalin-2 LNG project, Osaka Gas’s president Masataka Fujiwara said on Friday.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Gazprombank in what the Treasury said was “another major step in implementing commitments made by G7 leaders to curtail Russia’s use of the international financial system to further its war against Ukraine.”
The latest sanction measures include the designation of Gazprombank, more than 50 internationally connected Russian banks, more than 40 Russian securities registrars, and 15 Russian finance officials.
Japan’s city gas provider Osaka Gas, which has a long-term agreement to receive LNG from Sakhalin-2, will not see its transactions affected because it does not use Gazprombank for payment settlement for the fuel, Fujiwara said on Friday, as carried by Reuters.
So far, the U.S. Treasury has refrained from imposing sanctions on Gazprombank, which has been used by Russia’s European customers to pay for the natural gas they still receive from Russia.
Europe has reduced its overall reliance on Russian natural gas but has seen its LNG imports from Russia rise.
Russian LNG accounted for 20% of the EU’s liquefied natural gas imports in the first nine months of 2024, compared to 14% for the same period last year, amid markedly lower EU imports of the super-chilled fuel, a report by the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) showed last month.
While the Russian LNG share of the EU’s total LNG imports grew, it was a share of a smaller pie.
The U.S. sanctions on Gazprombank come as Europe has been on edge for weeks with the start of the winter heating season, a massive lull in wind speeds in northwestern Europe, an OMV-Gazprom dispute, and the end of the gas transit deal via Ukraine which expires on December 31, 2024. Ukraine has said that it would not pursue talks about renewing the agreement with Russia.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
