CEO of Ukraine's national energy company, Naftogaz of Ukraine, has tied a recent drop in natural gas transit shipments through the country's gas transportation system (GTS) with Moscow's pressure on Kyiv.
“Transit volumes dropped to record lows. We are associating this to the pressure that the Russian Federation is putting on Ukraine, on Naftogaz, primarily, to minimize the income from this type of operation; and secondly, I think this is part of the tactic to promote Nord Stream II,” Andriy Kobolev said on Channel 5 on July 27 evening.
According to the Ukrtransgaz, the operator of Ukraine’s GTS, on July 24-25 gas transit via Ukraine dropped to 154-155 million cubic meters of natural gas per day from 180-210 million cubic meters in the first 23 days of July. In particular, the biggest drop in recent days occurred at the Uzhgorod gas measuring station (the Slovakian corridor). On July 25 alone, Ukraine transited 85.4 million cubic meters of gas, and on July 24, it was 96.4 million cubic meters; but over the July 1-23 period the transit was at least 104 million cubic meters, on some of the days reaching 120 million cubic meters.
As well as cutting down on transit volumes, Russia also reduced pressure on the entry to the Ukrainian GTS, which creates certain technical problems for Ukrtransgaz, Kobolev said.
“For now the company has been able to resolve these problems efficiently, but it seems to me the Russians want to do all they can to prove to their European partners that Ukraine cannot be a transit country, and what they started doing now is banal blackmailing of them and us,” he said.
The Naftogaz chief said that he had written to the European Commission suggesting that it send in a monitoring group as a preliminary-response mechanism to analyze the situation, register instances of Gazprom violating its contractual obligations to supply gas pressure in Ukraine’s GTS, and make a decision on this situation.
The instance of Gazprom not fulfilling its contractual obligations to supply gas pressure could also be reported to a Stockholm arbitration court for consideration, Kobolev said.
“Of course we will take note of the instance of Gazprom not complying with the transit agreement,” he said.
It was reported that in January-June 2016, Ukraine increased natural gas transit shipments to Europe and Moldova by 31 percent (or 8,897,700,000 cubic meters) from the same period in 2015 to 37,620,700,000 cubic meters (including 36,159,900,000 cubic meters for Europe and 1,462,800,000 for Moldova).
