Russia, Ukraine and the European Commission will hold their next trilateral meeting on Russian natural gas exports to Ukraine - a meeting to agree exports for the third quarter - before the end of June, the Russian energy minister said on Saturday.
“The date hasn’t been set. Experts are at work at the moment. They’re getting documents ready at expert level. But we’ll definitely have to carry through [the next meeting] before June 30 because we need a decision for the third quarter,” Alexander Novak told reporters.
The next meeting is particularly necessary if its agenda is to include a discussion on keeping Russia’s price discount for Ukraine in effect for a longer period, he said.
“But generally speaking, preparations for the winter aren’t far off, and so it’s important to understand clearly what volumes of gas would be pumped into underground gas depots,” he added.
Ukraine needs to pump between 18 billion and 20 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas into its underground depots by October 1 to have enough gas for this autumn and winter, Novak said, without saying how much gas was left in the depots.
