The energy war between Russia and the European Union entered a new and more intense phase Wednesday after Russian gas giant Gazprom announced it shut off supplies to customers in Poland and Bulgaria.
Gazprom said the shut-off will continue “until the payments are made” with the Russian ruble, a condition for purchases that Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced in the last month to force the hand of"unfriendly" nations of the West. It is the first such shut-off since Russia's invasion tanked relations between the interdependent fossil fuel producer and the EU.
That planning yielded a commitment by the Biden administration to provide additional U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas to Europe to the tune of tens of billions of cubic feet through at least 2030. Samantha Gross, director of the Brookings Institution's Energy Security and Climate Initiative, said Gazprom's move was not especially surprising considering the volatility of the war but emphasized there's"no question that it's an escalation."
Gross said the shut-off also has"a lot of symbolic value more than market value" due to Poland's and Bulgaria's being smaller markets relative to heavyweight customers of Russian gas such as Germany and Italy.
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