Gazprom will restrict gas sales on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) until violations by one of the participants connected with the drawing up act for gas are removed, Gazprom department deputy director Gennady Sukhov said.

"We will limit trading on SPIMEX until the violations are dealt with," Sukhov said during Russian Gas Market. Exchange Trade conference.

He said that the company is considering the possibility of selling gas on other exchanges.

Answering a question about how much gas Gazprom may "remove" from SPIMEX, Sukhov did not say, but noted that in May 1.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas were put up for trading and only 0.4 bcm were sold.

In response to what exchanges Gazprom may begin to sell gas on, Sukhov said that the company had been in dialog for 18 months, and "there were proposals to sell on the Moscow Energy Exchange and the St. Petersburg Exchange."

"We conducted meetings, unified approaches. We will allocate the volume and the exchanges are welcome to compete," he said.

During the conference, a representative of the trader Fuel Integrator Algorithm said that the violator was his company and the conflict arose due to the drawing up of the act for 20,000 bcm of gas. He proposed, in the first place, to agree on the rules of play in areas where there are gaps in legislation.