russia continues to use natural gas as geopolitical weapon – Naftogaz
Read in Google News! 
The russian Federation continues to use natural gas as a geopolitical weapon against Ukraine and the European Union, says Yuriy Vitrenko, Chairman of the Board at Naftogaz of Ukraine, ukrinform.net reported.
As proof, Vitrenko cited in a Facebook post a recent statement by russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom that the continued gas transit through Ukraine depended on the EU companies purchasing additional gas volumes from Gazprom under new contracts.
“Why can’t the transit volumes under the current (!) contracts of Gazprom’s gas buyers in Europe be transmitted via Ukraine beyond 2024? Previously, both Germany and russia said the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was being built only for additional volumes. If these statements were honest, then the volumes under the current contracts should continue to run through Ukraine. And the best guarantee that this will be the case would be relocating gas transmission points under these current contracts to the Ukraine-russia border, so that later European buyers of Gazprom’s gas could themselves book transit through Ukraine. For our part, we assure that we will offer them competitive conditions,” the Naftogaz CEO wrote.“Why doesn’t Gazprom have a gas transmission point on the Ukraine-russia border on its electronic platform at the moment? For our part, at least from 2020, there’ve been no obstacles to this end. Gazprom’s counterparties would then be able to book transit through Ukraine themselves. Do you really want to sell additional volumes to Europe? Then why aren’t you? Let me remind you that Gazprom has reserved transit volumes through Ukraine in 2021 that are 25 billion cubic meters below those in 2020. So go sell these 25 bcm to European companies on the russia-Ukraine border for further transit to Europe!” Vitrenko noted.
Читай у Google News! 