| 2014-12-01 |
Russia and Ukraine agree on gas supplies |
Russia and Ukraine agree on gas supplies
According to Marosh Shefchovich, the new Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of energy, there should not be any problems with gas supply to Ukraine this year.
During talks in Brussels the European Commission, Ukraine and Russia agreed last week to resume the Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine until March 2015. All the parties comply with the contract provisions so far.
Ukraine’s “winter gas package”, as labelled by the media, assumes that Ukraine will pay its debt to Russia in two portions. The first payment in the amount of 1,45 bln US dollars is made. After that Russia agreed to make a discount of $100 (per 1,000 cubic meters).
Ukraine declared it would purchase four billion cubic meters of natural gas by the end of 2014. The final amount of the debt will be established by the Stockholm International Arbitration Court in which Russia filed a lawsuit to recover $4.5 from Ukraine. Yet both sides of the dispute have their claims.
“Right now Ukraine is discussing how much gas people need till spring. The second $1.65 billion will be paid by Ukraine to Gazprom by the end of the year. Of course, it would be impossible without the financial help of the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund. That is why we strictly control that all the parties follow the agreement. Everything is fine now, we keep close contact with both Russia and Ukraine, so we hope there should be any problems with gas this winter.”- says the EU representative.
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