"GasTerra will not go along with Gazprom's payment demands," the company said in a statement on its website."This is because to do so would risk breaching sanctions imposed by the EU and also because there are too many financial and operational risks associated with the required payment route."
Countries still can receive Russian liquefied natural gas as Mr Putin's demands for roubles covered only supplies from Gazprom. They all have also said that they can cope without the fuel using alternatives. The halt in supplies to GasTerra means about 2 billion cubic meters of gas won't be delivered between now and Oct 1, when the company's contract with the Russian energy giant was set to expire, the Dutch firm said. That's just over 1 per cent of Russia's total supplies to the European Union last year.
Orsted has a long-term contract for 20 terawatt-hours a year, or about 1.9 billion cubic metres, with Gazprom that's set to expire at the end of the decade. While that's just a fraction of EU's gas imports, it accounts for more than 80 per cent of the 24 terawatt hours of the fuel that Denmark imported from Moscow in the same period.