Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said that the country has come close to losing its gas transportation system (GTS).
"The gas transmission system is not just a pipe with a few taps, but the energy basis of our political independence. It means Ukraine’s power and weight in the global political arena. It is a historic treasure which no political ignoramus who has accidentally seized power must be allowed to control," Tymoshenko said in an open letter to the Verkhovna Rada with regard to the consideration of the bill on Ukraine’s oil and gas sector, which was published on the Web site of the Batkivschyna party on Tuesday.
"I urge the Ukrainian authorities to tame their zeal and to leave the GTS and other strategic facilities alone. I’m asking the Ukrainian public and Ukrainian parliament to protect the gas transportation system from the appetites of [Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych and his family," the letter reads.
"I also want to warn Ukraine’s partners in the European Union and Russia: Yanukovych is drawing you into a grand scam, which will rest not on a legal basis, but on the quicksand of lawlessness. Yanukovych is not eternal, and his end will come earlier than the world imagines. The new democratic and patriotic government will certainly disavow the agreement on the surrender of the GTS, as well as the infamous Kharkiv accords," the ex-premier added.
Claims that the system can be bypassed by new pipelines, "after which it would allegedly be left without volumes of natural gas sufficient for transmission are patently deceitful," she said.
She also accused the government of seriously undervaluing the system.
"I had a sincere laugh when I heard that our gas transmission system is valued at $20 billion," she said.
The system yearly "handles 180 billion cubic meters of gas – hundreds of percent more than amounts cited as examples – and incorporates what are unique gas depots in global terms," she says. "At the most modest of estimates in terms of today’s price levels, our gas transmission system costs more than 200 billion euros."
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