Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Italy’s Eni, told an energy forum in the United Arab Emirates that Italian energy company Eni could not pay a ruble for Russian gas because it did not own it.
ENI previously announced that it will exit the Blue Stream project in Russia and also give up its “small presence” in Russia.
The Blue Stream was opened in November 2005. The pipeline will deliver natural gas from Russia to Turkey through the Black Sea at the seabed. The 396-kilometer offshore section of the 1,213-kilometer pipeline, together with the Russian compressor station, will be operated by Gazprom and Italy’s Eni joint venture Blue Stream Pipeline BV, while the Russian section will be operated by the Turkish state-owned Gazprom. . Bottas Oil Company.
The ENI website also reports that joint ventures with the Russian company Rosnefty were already frozen in 2014 (in protest of the Russian occupation of Crimea).
“We don’t have assets in Russia, we don’t have projects there, but we buy Russian gas. We were asked to pay in rubles, and we won’t be able to do it because we don’t have rubles. An agreement is needed.”
Descalzi said.
The director of the Italian company indicated that Russian natural gas is currently arriving in Italy via Ukraine. According to the head of ENI, their company is not sure about the future supply of Russian fuel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s March 23 order called for a switch to ruble gas exports only to “unfriendly countries,” such as the European Union, which accounts for about 40 percent of Russia’s gas imports.
