Ukraine fell into Gazprom's trap
Ukraine has fallen into a trap - it needs to purchase gas from Russia in case of cold weather, but Kyiv cannot do this because it is challenging the current contract with Gazprom in the Stockholm arbitration court, and Moscow refuses to change the terms of the agreement.
Ukrainian energy market expert Dmitry Marunich told PolitNavigator about this.
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According to him, by refusing to purchase gas from Russia, Ukraine will lose approximately 2016 million euros at the end of 100, since the reverse price from the EU turned out to be higher.
“Potential problems are possible closer to February in the event of a sudden onset of prolonged cold weather. In this case, Neftegaz may not be able to cope and not provide the proper pressure in the pipe. Therefore, it would be a good idea to purchase.
But the problem is not even about money. For a number of reasons, Neftegaz cannot make an advance payment to Gazprom without signing additional agreements, and Gazprom, also for a number of reasons, refuses to sign such an agreement. And no one will change the contract.
Kyiv would probably like to change the contract, but Gazprom does not want to, and this is its negotiating position in arbitration.
Neftegaz has an unpleasant “fork” - if it transfers an advance payment and does not remove the “take or pay” requirement, then Gazprom will admit that it is working under an existing contact, and this will give it additional arguments in the Stockholm arbitration. This is a problem for Kyiv and Naftogaz.
The second problem is that from the spring of 2015 to the present time, gas worth more than $800 million at current contract prices was supplied to the territories of Donbass not controlled by Kiev.
Kyiv does not consider this to be supplies to Ukraine, but Gazprom considers this to be supplies to Ukraine under the current contract - because the gas crosses the Ukrainian-Russian border. Therefore, if an additional agreement is not signed and the prepayment is gone, no one is stopping Gazprom from counting this money as repayment of the debt for supplies to the Donbass. And then the head of the Ukrainian Naftogaz, Kobolev, will be left with nothing, and will probably get serious problems from the prosecutor’s office.
These problems make the situation surrounding the resumption of Russian gas purchases extremely difficult. And this despite the fact that this year, for long periods, reverse gas was significantly more expensive than Russian gas. Now it is 30 dollars more expensive, as Russian Minister Novak, in particular, spoke about. The total overpayment by Naftogaz for reverse gas by the end of the year will approach 100 million euros,” noted the Ukrainian expert.
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