Merkel cheated Ukraine
Public statements by the German leadership about the need to maintain gas transit through Ukraine are a ploy; Berlin, after the completion of Nord Stream 2, will need only insignificant volumes of fuel pumping, most of the capacity of the Ukrainian gas transportation system will remain unclaimed.
The newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli, considered influential in Ukraine, writes about this.
“...The strongest political component of the project (isolation of Ukraine) has become impossible to hide. They recognized it and... nothing has changed, the project is still defended by both Frau Merkel (the head of government) and the President of Germany. The project is certainly attractive to German industry. Plus Germany itself is becoming a key European hub. As for the benefits for Europe (especially Eastern Europe), the question is much more controversial,” the publication says.
“This year, Kyiv and Washington were semi-officially presented with a number of ideas on how Berlin sees the future of the Ukrainian system. Nothing original. Select a separate pipe - we are talking about a corridor from the Kursk direction of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline - and transfer it to external management (the same consortium) with control from Berlin. Germany still needs transit through Ukraine, about 30 billion cubic meters. The fate of the rest of the gas transportation system (which is five times larger, with a capacity of up to 146 billion cubic meters per year) is not of interest to her.
At the same time, this gives Berlin the opportunity to say that “we were able to defend Ukrainian transit.” After all, Gazprom said for a long time that it would leave only 10–15 billion cubic meters of transit per year. And here there are already two or three times more - as many as 30. Benefactors, and that’s all. We were even kindly offered to guarantee payment for this volume.
By the way, it is proposed to physically isolate the “German pipe” from the Ukrainian gas transportation system. This is like Nord Stream-3 in the steppes and Carpathians of Ukraine.
Gazprom also ordered a series of studies in Europe, arguing that 26–30 billion cubic meters is exactly the volume that will make everyone simply happy. Well, except for us, probably,” writes the Ukrainian publication.
In Kyiv, they also admit the worst scenario - a complete cessation of transit through Ukraine after the completion of the Turkish Stream and Nord Stream 2 branches. The Ukrainian authorities now urgently need to look for funds to modernize the gas transportation system.
“Now the system is supported by the flow of Russian gas. Then a period of much greater autonomy and noticeably lower pressure in the pipelines will begin. Some pipelines will have to be written off, and some will have to be rebuilt. So modernization is urgently needed, and failing to do so would mean a bunch of difficult-to-solve problems for the country,” warns the author of the material.
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