"To sell gas, you need someone to declare in advance their willingness to buy it. After all, supplies through the gas pipeline cannot be rolled back. And potential consumers in Europe estimate the costs at spot prices and, obviously, think it is better to weather the current spike. Sooner or later prices will go down, no one doubts that", Chizhov said.
"If the winter was harsher and reserves were exhausted faster, surely European companies would buy additional gas even at high prices. But so far, the winter is generally mild, so there are no requests, and since there are none, there are no supplies", Chizhov said.
"The current crisis on the European gas market is a problem that was bound to appear eventually. Its origins lie in the European Commission's policy of abandoning long-term gas contracts and shifting to trading on the spot markets. We have been saying for a long time that this would not do any good. This is a market, there can always be considerable price fluctuations," Chizhov added.