LONDON — Keir Starmer’s government has a crunch decision to make: Whether to keep heating much of the British state via a firm linked to Russian fossil fuels.

Under an existing public sector deal, TotalEnergies Gas & Power — a U.K. subsidiary of French energy giant TotalEnergies — supplies the gas used to heat No. 10 Downing Street, the Treasury, and other parts of Whitehall. 

That agreement, worth up to £8 billion, expires early next year. Officials are preparing a public tendering process for its replacement, which will be awarded later this year and will run from 2027 to 2030. 

But TotalEnergies retains ties to fossil fuel trade with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Now, pro-Ukrainian campaigners and parliamentarians — including the Labour chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Ukraine — want ministers to rule out its subsidiary from winning the new contract. 

In a letter to Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who oversees government procurement body the Crown Commercial Service, they warn that “continuing a contract with companies involved with Russia’s energy sector is inconsistent” with the U.K.’s repeatedly-touted goal of undermining Russia’s fossil fuel revenues, which are used to finance its war on Ukraine.   

“In view of escalating Russian hybrid attacks against the U.K., and ongoing brutal attacks across Ukraine, public sector procurement must align not only with sanctions but also with government foreign policy, including efforts to deter and disrupt Russian aggression,” they write. 

The letter — co-ordinated by campaign groups Razom We Stand and B4 Ukraine —  is co-signed by Labour MP Alex Sobel, who chairs the Ukraine APPG, as well as Green MPs Carla Denyer and Siân Berry, both former party co-leaders.

Sobel, who has visited Ukraine seven times since the full-scale invasion, last month called for “maximum pressure on Russia.”

Out in the cold

Svitlana Romanko, executive director of Razom We Stand, said that “brutal Russian attacks on our energy systems” had knocked out “energy and heating systems across Ukraine in -20C weather.” 

“We implore the U.K. government to end their contract with TotalEnergies,” she said. 

Under the existing gas deal, public buildings in Whitehall, and other public sector buildings around the U.K. including NHS hospitals, are supplied with gas for heating and cooking by TotalEnergies Gas & Power.  

While the contract itself complies with the U.K.’s ban on Russian gas imports, it has been condemned by Ukrainian campaign groups and Labour MPs because of TotalEnergies’ continued ties to Russian fossil fuels.   

The firm holds a 20 percent stake in the Yamal liquefied natural gas facility in Siberia, from where it continues to import Russian gas to Europe under long-term contracts which it says it cannot break. 

A TotalEnergies spokesperson said the firm “condemned Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.” The firm “operates legally within the framework of the energy policy and sanctions policy defined by the authorities of the European Union and its member states,” they added. 

TotalEnergies has been the gas supplier of choice for the U.K. public sector since 2019, under the two successive CCS procurement contracts.  

The new contract — known as Supply of Energy 3 — is now being prepared. A tender notice is expected to be published in June and a contract awarded in December. 

A Cabinet Office spokesperson declined to comment on a live procurement process.