November 21 saw the United States announce a new major package of sanctions against 100 financial organizations, Gazprombank being the largest of them. This time, the US Treasury has focused on Russian banks’ cross-border transactions, including by means of the Financial Messaging System. Such "attacks" only encourage the authorities and businesses to look for new workarounds for sanctions. But alternative algorithms are not going to work right away.

US sanctions against Gazprombank make it all but impossible to pay for gas supplies, and European consumers will have to look for a new scheme, which takes a while.

Starting March 2022, Gazprombank has been authorized to settle payments for the export of Russian pipeline gas and oil with unfriendly countries, but since November 21, it has been on the SDN list of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), along with its foreign structures. Transactions involving the bank are allowed until December 20, with the only exception made for operations involving Gazprombank as part of the Sakhalin 2 LNG project (until June 28, 2025).

Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has commented on the inclusion of Gazprombank in the US sanctions list, calling it an attempt by the American authorities to prevent the supply of Russian gas to Europe, given that ruble payments with unfriendly states have been conducted through Gazprombank since 2022.

Today, a new gas crisis is looming over Europe. New sanctions have been imposed amid rapidly declining stocks and potentially reduced supplies from the Russian Federation. Due to increased geopolitical tensions, prices have increased by 45% this year, Bloomberg estimates. The situation is aggravated by inability to use wind farms at full pace to generate electricity over windless conditions.

As Bloomberg notes, the current growth rate of the price of a cubic meter is significantly lower than those observed in 2022, but this is still enough "to risk deepening a cost-of-living crisis for households and intensifying competitive pressure on strapped manufacturers." "This is beginning to resemble a 2022 scenario in which the EU purchased gas at any price," Global Risk Management strategist Arne Rasmussen said.

The price of December futures at the TTF hub in the Netherlands reached $538 per 1,000 cubic meters at the moment, as evidenced by data from the ICE Futures exchange. The previous time gas was traded above this level was November 2023.

European natural gas prices have risen to a record high in the past year over fears that escalated geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe could lead to disruptions in Russian pipeline gas supplies, The Wall Street Journal writes.

The ongoing round of Western-provoked geopolitical escalation around Ukraine now jeopardizes transit via the country to a greater extent. Gazprom is getting closer to the decision to give up on transit through the Gas Transportation System of Ukraine (GTSU), especially after November 16, when supplies were stopped to favor the Austrian OMV group. Supplies to OMV were "reset" after the company threatened to confiscate part of Gazprom's blue fuel and announced termination of relevant payments as compensation for arbitration it won in a contract dispute.

Gazprom will clearly lose several billion dollars in revenues when the GTSU gets closed. A commercial "sacrifice" amid military escalation in Ukraine will not be a disaster in general. Moreover, the situation has been largely incited by the European side. Moscow has repeatedly expressed readiness to use the survivor line of Nord Stream 2. Moreover, in case of terminating the GTSU, the Kiev regime and Naftogaz would lose a considerable financial inflow worth hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from Gazprom in annual transit payments.

Washington not only seeks to deprive Russia of export revenues with its sanctions, but also paves the way for American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the European Union. This makes a new round of anti-Russian sanctions by the US authorities a quite logical thing. Besides, it will be possible to sell overseas "molecules of freedom" (batches of methane) to Europeans at a much higher price than if restrictions were not permanently intensified. So, Washington's new sanctions may be implicitly regarded as a challenge to Brussels: winter is coming, and the EU's energy security bar is mediocre; while industries most sensitive to the price environment in the Old World are energy-intensive ones.