The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects by the end of this year to complete negotiations on the allocation of a loan for the modernization of the Ukrainian gas transport system, EBRD Director in Ukraine Andre Kuusvek has said.
“I hope that we’ll get to the signing of this project by the end of the year,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.
Kuusvek said that the project to upgrade the Ukrainian gas transport system is important not only for Ukraine, but also for the European Union.
As reported, Ukraine officially announced in the summer of 2011 that it had started modernizing its GTS using its own funds. According to preliminary calculations, the modernization will cost $5.3 billion over five to seven years.
The first stage of reconstructing the country’s GTS will be to modernize the Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline with the involvement of international financial organizations. The first phase of modernizing the section of that pipeline is reckoned to take three years, at a cost of $538.87 million, including $230.87 million of Naftogaz’s own funds and $308 million in loan funds ($154 million each from the EBRD and European Investment Bank).
