Popular Russian company RAO Nordic turns down its agreement of exporting electricity supplies to its neighbouring country Finland over the past weekend. The company gave the reason that they had not received the payments from Finland due to sanctions.
RAO Nordic, a subsidiary of the Russian energy company Inter RAO, who suspended the export of electricity on May 14th as per the announcement made by Fingrid which is the operator of majority Finland’s state-owned national electricity transmission grid.
“In practice, the notification means that there will be no Russian electricity in Finland at all for the time being,” the Director of Operations at Fingrid Reima Päivinen told state broadcaster Yle.
If one sees the bigger picture then almost ten per cent of Finland’s total electricity supply is imported from Russia but after this incident Fingrid has given a statement that even if no electricity is being imported from Russia at all Finland’s electricity needs will still be met.
“It is, of course, spring-summer and the amount of consumption has decreased from the peak winter consumption. Finland will do just fine without Russian electricity supply. Replacement electricity comes from domestic production or imports mainly from Sweden and the Baltics,” Päivinen said.
From RAO Nordic perspective, they have claimed that the electricity shut down is due to missing payments saying, “Due to problems in receiving payments for electricity sold on the market, further direct or bilateral sales of electricity imported from Russia will be halted until further notice.”
Russia has also expressed displeasure earlier regarding both Finland and Sweden potentially joining NATO.
Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the issue Monday saying, “As to enlargement, Russia has no problem with these states – none. And so in this sense, there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion (of NATO) to include these countries.”
“But the expansion of military infrastructure into this territory would certainly provoke our response,” Putin said and added, “What that (response) will be – we will see what threats are created for us.”
The move by RAO Nordic to shut off supplies to Finland comes as Russian energy giant Gazprom announced that it would no longer be sending exported gas to Europe through the Yamal pipeline, which goes through Poland to reach Germany, the largest importer of Russian gas in Europe.
“A ban is in place on making transactions with and payments to persons under sanctions. In particular, for Gazprom, this means a ban on the use of a gas pipeline owned by (the Polish company) EuRoPol GAZ to transport Russian gas through Poland,” Gazprom representative Sergey Kupriyanov stated.
Earlier this year, results of the sanctions enacted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Putin announced that “unfriendly” nations would have to pay for energy they import from Russia in roubles rather than euros or dollars whether peacefully or forcefully.
Several companies, such as Italian energy giant Eni and others were rumoured to have been preparing late last month to open accounts in roubles in order to take part in the scheme, which allegedly allowed firms to avoid breaking sanctions.