Russia sparks threat of repeat gas crisis
Russia’s state-controlled gas giant Gazprom has raised the threat of another gas crisis with Ukraine, warning that the ex-Soviet nation was building up its winter gas supplies too slowly, possibly endangering smooth deliveries to Europe.
Gazprom said in a statement that a company meeting yesterday noted that “gas is being injected at too slow a rate” into underground storage facilities in Ukraine. The company added that it would push Ukraine’s Naftogas company to build up the necessary reserves.
Prompt withdrawal from storage facilities in Ukraine is essential to the smooth supply of natural gas from Russia to central and western Europe in the peak demand season in winter.
“The creation of necessary reserves in underground storage in Ukraine in time for the start of the winter heating season is of cardinal importance for guaranteeing uninterrupted gas supply to Ukrainian customers and for the fulfilment of Ukraine’s obligations in transporting gas to European states,” Gazprom’s statement said.
Gazprom temporarily cut gas supplies to Ukraine in early January at the climax of a dispute between the two over a sharp price hike, resulting in a brief interruption of supplies to Europe as Ukraine continued to skim gas from the transit pipeline that carries 80% of Gazprom’s European exports.
The fight has prompted the European Union to search for alternate gas supply routes to reduce its dependence on Gazprom, which provides a quarter of the European gas consumption. The Kremlin was seen as having used Gazprom to push the price rise to punish Ukraine’s Western-leaning president Viktor Yushchenko.
A spokesman for Naftogaz said he was not aware of problems linked to filling the underground storage, but said that there could be problems related to gas transit to Europe because Gazprom refused to put its own gas into Ukrainian storage.
The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told Dow Jones Newswires that the potential problems could be similar to those during the past winter.
