The Supreme Court of Ukraine on Nov. 24 a cassation appeal by Naftogaz Ukrainy and upheld rulings by lower courts concerning a Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal ruling obliging Naftogaz to return natural gas to RosUkrEnergo, the Supreme Court's press secretary, Liudmyla Momot, has said.
The case was considered by a panel of judges chaired by Vasyl Humeniuk.
Naftogaz’s press service declined to comment on the progress of this case.
As reported, Swiss gas trader RosUkrEnergo filed a lawsuit at the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal, which on June 8, 2010 issued a ruling obliging Naftogaz to return 11 billion cubic meters of natural gas to RosUkrEnergo, as well as pay contractual penalties totaling 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas. Prior to that, the arbitration tribunal ruled that Naftogaz should pay $197 million to RosUkrEnergo as settlement of disputes between the companies in 2008.
RosUkrEnergo later filed appeals in the Ukrainian courts in order to enforce the Stockholm ruling.
Naftogaz estimates its spending on the settlement of a dispute with Swiss-based natural gas trader RosUkrEnergo at Hr 9.6 billion, and hopes that RosUkrEnergo will return $1.7 billion worth of its debt assigned under a contract with Russia’s Gazprom in 2009.
Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo, founded in September 2004 on a 50-50 basis by Gazprom and Centragas Holding AG, is a company controlled by Ukrainian businessmen Dmytro Firtash (90%) and Ivan Fursin (10%). RosUkrEnergo was the monopoly supplier of Russian gas to Ukraine in 2006-2008.
Naftogaz unites the country’s largest oil and gas producers. It is Ukraine’s gas transit and underground storage monopolist. It also holds a monopoly in oil transportation by pipelines across Ukraine.
