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FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM
Naftogaz open to new deal with Gazprom
UKRAINE
UKRAINE’S state-owned Naftogaz has said it is open to reaching a new natural gas supply and transit contract with Russia’s state-run Gazprom.
Naftogaz’s executive director Yuriy Vitrenko said in a Facebook post on November 25 that the company was willing to sign a new 10-year transit contract.
The executive added that the Russian gas giant could use either money or gas supplies to pay off its roughly $3bn debt to Ukraine. The amount was determined by a Stockholm court’s arbitration ruling in February 2018 on the two sides’ long-running dispute.
Naftogaz says Gazprom racked up the amount after the Russian company not only failed to meet its minimum annual transit vol- umes but also because it did not pay in full the transit fees owed on the quantities that were sent.
Gazprom submitted an appeal to the Svea County Court of Appeal in Sweden in March and Naftogaz submitted a statement of defence as well as its counterclaims at the start of Novem- ber. A final ruling is not due until May 2021.
Commenting on the prospect of a new deal, Vitrenko said any deal would need to have a guaranteed minimum annual transit volume of 60bn cubic metres, and 30 bcm of additional
flexibility.
“At present, we do not see any legitimate
reasons for not concluding a new contract for the transit of gas through Ukraine according to European rules, and we express our willingness to work honestly on this,” Vitrenko said.
The executive’s comments come exactly a week after Gazprom announced that it had sent a letter to Ukraine proposing either the exten- sion of the current 10-year deal, which expires on December 31, or the creation of a new one- year agreement.
Gazprom said legal claims and coun- ter-claims by both countries would need to be dropped in order for a new deal to be signed. This echoed the gas giant’s previous comments that any new deal between the two sides would require all outstanding legal disputes to be resolved.
Kiev has previously resisted a short-term deal over concern that Russia’s endeavours to build new pipelines, such as Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream, will reduce Moscow’s reliance on Ukraine as a gas transit corridor.
Gazprom pumped 87 bcm of gas to Europe via Ukraine in 2018, earning Kiev around $3bn in transit fees.™
Russia pumping record amounts of gas across Ukraine to EU as cutoff looms
UKRAINE
RUSSIA is pumping a record 300mn cubic metres per day of natural gas across Ukraine to the EU in preparation for possibly cutting Ukraine off from gas deliveries on January 1, the director of Ukraine’s Gas Transit System, Serhiy Makogon, wrote on Facebook on November 20 as cited by UBN.
In an interview with bne IntelliNews, Nafto- gaz warned of a gas war breaking out after the
current supply and transit deal with Russia’s Gaz- prom expires at the end of this year.
Naftogaz executive director Yuriy Vitrenko told the new service that the company’s default position is that it will be cut off from all Russian gas supplies on January 1 and it has been scram- bling to build up reserves, as well as preparing pumping stations to be able to reverse flows in order to be able to send gas from the reserve
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 47 27•November•2019