Ukraine's Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn considers the statement made by Russia's Transneft, which announced the plan to close a deal on the sale of a Ukrainian oil pipeline in the first quarter, to be premature.
“A number of court hearings were held… Another hearing should have taken place on February 3, but it was postponed. Talking about sale is nonsense until the legal part of the issue is resolved,” he said at a meeting of the parliamentary committee on fuel and energy complex.
As reported, Transneft Vice President Sergey Andronov on Jan. 13 announced the plan to close a deal on the sale of an oil pipeline in Ukraine in the first quarter of 2016.
Transneft in 2015 decided to sell its subsidiary Yugo-Zapad Transnefteproduct, which owns PrykarpatZakhidtrans operating an oil pipeline passing through Ukraine. Transneft currently does not carry out oil pumping through the territory of Ukraine. Earlier the volume of oil pumped by PrykarpatZakhidtrans amounted to 1.7 million tonnes per year, including transit, particularly to Hungary and the domestic market. However, ongoing trials in Ukraine concerning the ownership of the pipeline and the product in the tube made PrykarpatZakhidtrans’ operations impossible.
