ZURICH - Austria's OMV is seeking to diversify its sources of energy while awaiting legal clarity on how to handle its delivery deals with long-time Russian gas supplier partner Gazprom, its chief executive said.
The European Union on Tuesday launched new sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine, including bans on Russian energy sector investments, but EU members can still buy oil and gas from big Russian producers.
"The (Russian) delivery contracts run until 2040 and we will see how the legal environment and the sanctions environment develop over the next few years. Otherwise, of course, this is an existing contract," CEO Alfred Stern told ORF radio in an interview aired on Saturday.
Pressed on whether an early exit from the Gazprom contract was an option, he said: "You can review that legally, and that's why it will be important to see what the legal environment really looks like in this context. At the moment we are really mainly concerned with ensuring security of supply. What other consequences that will have will become clear over the next few months."
Asked whether OMV was conducting such a legal review, he said: "At the moment we are mainly concerned with ensuring security of supply here. We are in discussions with the government about how that can happen, how we can diversify our sources of supply, how we can increase the amount of storage to make sure that we have long-term supply."
Austria gets 80% of its gas from Russia. Replacing this supply would not be simple and would require massive investment in infrastructure, Stern said.
"Our possibilities in Austria are really limited in the short term," he said.
OMV said this month it had no plans to refine Russian crude oil in the "near future".
