KYIV, July 24 – Ukraine, one of the world’s largest natural gas consumers, wants to negotiate new gas supplies with Turkmenistan, a senior official said Monday.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko, who is in charge of Ukraine’s troubled energy market, said she will travel to the Central Asian republic on Tuesday for talks on expanding strategic cooperation with Turkmenistan.
“Turkmenistan is our absolutely strategic partner in the sphere of natural gas supplies and Ukraine just has no right to treat this country the way it did,” said Tymoshenko.
Ukraine and Turkmenistan signed a $720 million deal in 1998 on supplying some 20 billion cubic meters (700 billion cubic feet) of gas to Ukraine in 1999. The gas began flowing in January 1999, but deliveries were suspended repeatedly because of Ukraine’s mounting debt.
Overall, Ukraine has received only 8.76 billion cubic meters (306.6 billion cubic feet) of Turkmen gas since 1999, for which it was to pay some $315.5 million, the Interfax news agency reported. But so far, economically struggling Ukraine has paid only a total of $222.9 million, just $13.7 million of it in cash.
Ukraine “must pay its debts, do everything in order to be seen as a reliable partner and continue its commercial relationship with Turkmenistan,” Tymoshenko said.
Turkmen gas supplies are important for Ukraine, which gets most of its gas from neighboring Russia but finds the supplies threatened by its huge gas debt to Moscow. Kyiv estimates the debt at $1.4 billion but Russia’s Gazprom gas monopoly says Ukraine owes about $2 billion.
Gazprom, which has also accused Ukrainian operators of stealing gas, presently cannot suspend supplies because the same pipelines are used to transfer some 90 percent of Russian gas exports to Europe. However, Russian officials recently have been discussing plans to build an export pipeline that would bypass Ukraine.
Ukraine is the world’s sixth largest gas consumer and needs about 75 billion cubic meters (2.6 trillion cubic feet) of gas annually. Its domestic production amounts to about 18 billion cubic meters.
