Russia's Gazprom requests reversal of Stockholm Arbitration Court decision regarding Ukraine's Naftogaz dispute
On Monday, May 28, Gazprom sent an appeal to the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm for a full reversal of the Stockholm Arbitration Court’s earlier decision regarding the transit contract dispute between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukraine.
Gazprom said that an unauthorized person intervened in the Stockholm Arbitration Court’s verdict process, which decided that the Russian company Gazprom must pay a US $4.7 billion fine to Naftogaz Ukraine.
According to Interfax, Gazprom released a clarifying statement noting the following: "Additional study of the text of the ruling by internationally acknowledged linguistic experts show that a significant portion of the text of the arbitration ruling was not written by the arbiter but by some other person. Clearly, no one has the right to replace the arbiters. The direct pronouncement of the ruling by the arbiters has extraordinarily great import for the parties to the dispute, and interference by outside persons in the process of rendering the decision is a blatant violation of the arbitration agreement."
In February 2018, the Stockholm Arbitration Court obliged Gazprom to pay the Ukrainian company Naftogaz US $4.63 billion for the pumping of 110 billion cubic meters of gas per year as envisaged in the transit contract. In December 2017, the Arbitration Court had awarded Gazprom US $2 billion in a dispute between the companies under a contract for gas supplies in 2009. This, after this amount was removed from the total, Naftogaz was to receive US $2.56 billion dollars from the Russian monopoly.
The Arbitration Court also ordered Gazprom to transport 110 billion cubic meters of gas per year through Ukraine until the end of the transit agreement in 2019, or else pay for the shortfall.