Vedomosti: "Too Much Gas"
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko promised to raise the issue of cutting Ukraine's purchases of gas from Russia during her working visit to Moscow on April 29 to attend a meeting of the Economic Cooperation Committee of the Russian-Ukrainian Intergovernmental Commission. "We will discuss cuts in natural gas consumption by Ukraine," Ms Tymoshenko told journalists yesterday.
That the gas issue will be one of the topics discussed in Moscow was confirmed by the Russian Prime Minister's press secretary Dmitry Peskov. "Adjustments to the gas agreement" will be discussed in Moscow, Ms Tymoshenko's press secretary, Marina Soroka, said for her part.
The gas agreement between Russia and Ukraine was signed on January 19 after the "gas war" last winter. Under the agreement Kiev is to buy 40 billion cubic metres of gas from Moscow this year. However, in January through March Ukraine consumed only half of the 5 billion cubic metres of gas contracted for the first quarter. "First, we are saving and second, business and industry are not working at full capacity because of the global crisis," Ms Tymoshenko explained yesterday.
At the end of March Ukraine's Naftogaz asked Gazprom to cut the volume of gas procurement for the current year to 33 billion cubic metres. At the time the two sides managed to agree only on the cost of Russian gas in the second quarter ($270 per 1,000 cubic metres compared with $360 in the first quarter). But no agreement was reached on cutting purchase volume. The request to Gazprom came immediately after Ukraine and the European Union signed a declaration on the modernisation of Ukraine's gas transportation system, which in turn provoked an angry reaction from Russia: Vladimir Putin described the document as "ill-considered and unprofessional to say the least." The intergovernmental consultations scheduled for early April were postponed.
Kiev will not buy the contracted amounts of gas even if Moscow this week fails to accommodate Ukraine's request for cutting purchases, Modest Kolerov, a political scientist and former head of the Presidential Directorate for the CIS, believes.
Under the contract between Gazprom and Naftogaz, Ukraine faces a fine for failing to buy the contracted amount: 150% of the cost of the shortfall in the supply of gas for October-March and 300% for the remaining period. Ukraine has already been forgiven once: in March Mr Putin said that Gazprom would not fine Ukraine for failing to buy the agreed upon gas saying that "one does not kick a partner when he is down." Gazprom declined to comment yesterday on what would happen if Ukraine again failed to buy the contracted gas.
By Natalya Portyakova
