Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has warned Europe not to block its ambitions to expand abroad and said it could sell its gas elsewhere.
"Attempts to limit Gazprom's activities in the European market and to politicise questions of gas supplies, which are in fact entirely within the economic sphere, will not produce good results," chief executive Alexei Miller said in a statement.
"It should not be forgotten that we are actively seeking new markets such as North America and China," Mr Miller said. "It's no coincidence that competition for energy resources is growing."
He delivered his comments after a meeting on Tuesday with ambassadors from the European Union, whose members rely on Russia for a quarter of their gas and were shocked when Gazprom cut supplies at the New Year in a price dispute with Ukraine.
His remarks also came after British competition regulators proposed changing takeover rules amid market speculation that Gazprom may bid for the country's largest gas distributor, Centrica.
Gazprom's Ukraine tactic prompted several EU members, led by France, to demand Russia ratifies the international energy charter, which would force it to open up its gas export pipelines to foreign competition.
France aired the idea at meetings of G8 finance and energy ministers earlier this year, angering Russia, which is chairing the group of eight industrialised nations for the first time and has chosen "energy security" as the theme for discussion.
After an apparent concession by Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who said Russia could one day cede control over export pipelines, his colleague at the oil ministry, Viktor Khristenko, ruled out the idea, saying it would never happen.
Gazprom is developing its export options with plans for new pipelines to China and a huge project to develop an Arctic gas field and sell its output as liquefied natural gas to the US market, with first deliveries expected around 2010.