Gazprom has been given more time to respond to charges by European Union antitrust regulators after it was alleged the company levies excessive prices and blocks rivals in Eastern Europe.
The European Commission announced in April that the Russian oil giant had been given 12 weeks to reply to the charges.
Antitrust regulators had brought the charges after more than two years of investigation.
Two months ago, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said it appeared Gazprom had built “artificial barriers” preventing gas from flowing from certain Central Eastern European
countries to others.
Settlement talks with Gazprom, which is owned by the Russian government, froze as tensions escalated about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, where it annexed the Crimea region and was accused of supporting an insurgency that’s threatened to split the country apart.
Russia’s relations with the US and the EU have sunk to post Cold-War lows since the crisis.
Europe imported 27% of its natural gas from Russia last year. The 28-nation block imports 53 percent of the energy it consumes at a cost of about 1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) per day,
according to the commission.
The EU’s antitrust case against Gazprom hit the headlines in 2011 with raids on Gazprom and its customers.
Regulators opened a formal probe the following year, saying sales contracts that linked natural gas to oil prices may no longer be justified because gas was increasingly being traded on spot markets as a shale gas boom expanded supplies.
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