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10 I Companies & Markets bne December 2021
“It's the same thing any Western company would do. There is a whole industry in the USA trying to work out how to optimise tax payments,” Khodorkovsky said at the time.
Former Yukos shareholders have sought to recover their assets by taking their case to the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), from where the case proceeded through the Dutch legal system.
Legal proceedings seeking to enforce the awards were subsequently lodged in the Netherlands, the UK and the United States by subsidiaries of GML, formerly known as Group Menatep Ltd, which held around 70% of the shares in Yukos.
GML said in a statement it had won substantive grounds
of appeal and it was “confident that the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam will dismiss the baseless allegations raised by the Russian Federation, and the arbitral awards will be upheld.”
German regulator Bundesnetzagentur suspends the approval of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, gas prices spike
bne IntelliNews
In a surprise decision, the German Bundesnetzagentur, responsible for awarding the certification that would allow the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to go into operation, has decided to suspend the process until its holding company has reorganised its legal structure to conform with German law, the body said in a tweet.
The Bundesnetzagentur said once these changes have been made it would resume its work and probably take the four months mandated to consider the application. The upshot of the suspension of the Bundesnetzagentur work is that it is now highly unlikely that Nord Stream 2 will come online this winter.
Prices for natural gas spiked on the news, rising back above $1,000 per thousand cubic metres after they had fallen in the last week to around $700-$800 after Russia’s gas company Gazprom began to increase supplies of gas to its EU-based storage facilities.
“The certification procedure will remain suspended until the main assets and human resources have been transferred to
the subsidiary and the Bundesnetzagentur is able to check whether the documentation resubmitted by the subsidiarity, as the new applicant, is complete. When these requirements have been fulfilled, the Bundesnetzagentur will be able to resume its examination in the remained of the four-month period
set out in law. Produce a draft decision and delivery it to the European Commission for an opinion, as provided for in the EU legislation on the internal market,” the Bundesnetzagentur said in a tweet.
“If the pipeline is going to be certified, it will have to comply with EU regulations for third-party access, giving Rosneft, BP and other firms an opening to sell volumes via the pipeline
in the future. BP CEO Bernard Looney has made it clear his
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company would be happy to participate if Rosneft receives the legal right to export gas,” Nicholas Birman Trickett, a commodities analyst, said in a newsletter.
Increases in Russian throughput into Europe are operating off a low base and can't make up the shortfall with domestic demand at record levels too, which analysts say means that prices will stay high all winter now there will be no respite from an early approval of Nord Stream 2.
The length of the delay will depend on how long it takes decision-makers in Moscow to work out a legal arrangement ending Gazprom's pipeline export monopoly, something it has resisted for years.
And once the Kremlin has worked out a new scheme then this has to be presented to, and be acceptable to, the Bundesnetzagentur.
“It's a power play given the timing with events concerning Ukraine and Belarus, but one that still makes clear Germany wants the pipeline to be functional,” says Birman Trickett.
German regulator Bundesnetzagentur suspends the approval of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, gas prices spike