Yesterday prime minister Tymoshenko told journalists that over last three years gas relations between Ukraine and Turkmenistan have been completely destroyed. Most of Ukraine's imported gas is sourced in Turkmenistan, but it sold to Ukraine via monopolistic middleman RosUkrEnergo.
Tymoshenko said that Ukraine envisages Turkmenistan as a reliable partner and a country which could ensure diversification of gas supply to Ukraine. She noted that her government intends to renew the high level of collaboration between Ukraine and Turkmenistan.
The premier also expressed a desire to renew direct deliveries of gas from Turkmenistan to Ukraine and eliminate the RosUkrEnergo and Ukrgaz-Energo intermediaries.
President Yushchenko seems to have rather different views in these matters. On 27th December he did not answer a question from journalists about the need for mediators in the market for deliveries of gas to Ukraine, and only advised those Ukrainian politicians who sometimes blame Russia, "to turn back to Ukraine" and to start up effective programs of energy economy in order to prepare the economy to adapt to European market prices.
Yushchenko stated that Ukraine already has the lowest price of the gas among the European countries - $179,5 per thousand cu.m at the Russian-Ukrainian border. [So there..]
2 comments:
But she knows its all just talk - Gazprom have Turkmenstein all sewn up and doesn't their gas have to come through Russia in any event? As for Yush it's also just talk - it's all correct but he just doesn't seem to ever get it to actually happen.
Not sure how a stronger relationship with Turkmenistan qualifies as "diversification" ... but understand her point, I guess. Though still would need to rely on Gazprom for transport, of course, at least until that Black Sea gas pipeline gets built. (yeah, right) Thanks for the emails, working on a reply now.
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