Europe will now have to pay for gas theft in Ukraine
Moscow - Kyiv, May 16 (Navigator, Mikhail Stamm) - The European Commission invited European consumers to fill underground storage facilities in Ukraine at their own expense. They refused: there are no guarantees that the Ukrainians will not steal this gas. But in the end, Europeans will have to pay for Ukrainian theft, experts say.
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Kommersant experts believe that given Kyiv’s chronic non-payments for gas, EU consumers will inevitably have to take on the risks of transit reliability. European Commissioner for Energy Günter Oettinger invited the largest European consumers to buy and pump gas into Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities themselves for its uninterrupted transit to the EU in winter. Until now, Ukraine has been doing this, but now it refuses to pay even for current gas consumption, not agreeing with its price. Kyiv simply does not have the money to purchase at least an additional 8 billion cubic meters of gas for injection into underground gas storage facilities, which at the current price will cost about $4 billion.
According to one of the publication’s interlocutors, during informal consultations, the companies asked the European Commission to provide political guarantees that after gas is pumped into the underground gas storage facility, it “will not disappear” and their property rights will be respected. But Brussels could not guarantee anything.
The newspaper's sources on the gas market believe that European companies will not take specific measures in the coming month. “Everyone will wait for the results of the presidential elections in Ukraine, the elections in Europe and the change in the composition of the European Commission,” he says, adding that “nobody wants to spend money.”
Alexey Kokin from Uralsib Capital believes that, most likely, consumers will either actually fill Ukrainian UGS facilities at their own expense, or will provide Kyiv with funds for this. The expert believes that countries will have to do both at their own peril and risk, since the EC does not give guarantees, and the reliability of the promises of the future new authorities of Ukraine is far from obvious.
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