RWE initiates arbitration proceedings against Gazprom

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) -German energy firm RWE has initiated arbitration proceedings against Russia's Gazprom over missing gas deliveries, a spokesperson for RWE said, without providing further details.

The move comes after German utility Uniper last week launched an arbitration process in the hope of securing billions of euros in compensation from Gazprom over undelivered gas volumes.

RWE's exposure to Russian gas supplies has been fairly low in comparison, covering 15 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2023, which has been reduced to 4 TWh since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in late February.

"In the event of a full cut of supply, we calculate that the replacement of the remaining 4 TWh could cost at least an additional 400 million euros ($422 million)," Stifel Research analyst Martin Tessier wrote in June.

Uniper, which has incurred losses of around 11.6 billion euros to date by replacing Russian supplies that stopped since the end of August, has an exposure of 200 TWh.

Gazprom did not reply to a request for comment.

German gas trader VNG, which is owned by EnBW, declined to comment on whether it, too, had launched arbitration proceedings.

"We naturally examine all options and evaluate them in order to limit damage to the greatest possible extent," a spokesperson for VNG, which also received Russian gas until flows stopped, said.

($1 = 0.9466 euros)

(Reporting by Miranda Murray, Christoph Steitz, Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Rachel More, Susan Fenton and David Evans)