Gazprom’s Ukraine squeeze hits Turkey

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

Despite the obvious fact that Ukraine shut down the pipelines to Europe, they continued to pump gas to the Ukrainian system, Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom's deputy chief executive, told Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in a teleconference yesterday. Noting that there were some reserves to sustain the situation, Medvedev declined to say for how long.

Medvedev said gas supplies to the European Union and Turkey were running at around 200 million cubic metres a day, compared with the usual 430 mcm. "We called Ukraine to immediately open the pipelines. If it does not execute its transit country duty, no more Russian gas will flow to Europe from Ukraine," he said.

The Russian gas monopoly's dispute with Ukraine over debts and pricing has led to a complete stoppage of exports via its neighbour. Gazprom blames Ukraine for closing export pipelines, while Kiev accuses Moscow of not delivering gas.

"We cannot ship gas toward Ukraine. They (Ukraine) say we are not sending gas, but we haven't got the physical capacity after they shut down all pipelines and closed compressor stations," Medvedev told Reuters by telephone from Berlin.

Gazprom usually supplies around 300 mcm per day to Europe via Ukraine, another 80-90 mcm via the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Poland and Germany and around 35-40 mcm to Turkey via the Blue Stream pipeline during winter periods.

Medvedev said exports via alternative routes had increased.

"Yamal-Europe and gas storages are giving us some 150 mcm and we hope to increase the offtake from storages by another 10 mcm per day by the end of today," he said.

He said Gazprom's Blue Stream pipeline, which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey, was working at its full capacity of 48 mcm.

Russian gas supplies toward Ukraine were still running at 40 mcm a day, but Kiev was not exporting these volumes and was keeping them for domestic needs, Medvedev said.

Medvedev said he and his boss, Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller, would fly to Brussels for talks on Thursday."They will be high-level talks with the European Commission and European parliament," he said. Meanwhile the European Union accused Russia and Ukraine of holding their neighbors hostage with a cutoff of gas supplies and urged the countries' leaders to settle their dispute.