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Gazprom Surrendered to Ukraine
The war of Russia and Ukraine over the gas pricing has reached a stagnant stage. Gazprom yielded to Ukrainian threat to break contracts with Europe and resumed full supplies without any conditions. Ukraine that will be paying $179.5 per a thousand cu meters this year promised to proceed with negotiations.
The gas conflict of Russia and Ukraine aggravated to the bitter end past morning. In response to the second reduction, which halved gas supplies to Ukraine Tuesday, Kiev notified Gazprom of cutting off the gas transit to Europe by 60 million cu meters of the scheduled 365 million cu meters. At the same time, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko pledged that her country would deliver to Europe all gas shipped by Russia.
If any, the actual reduction in transit could be determined only after getting the consumption reports of Ukraine, said a source close to Gazprom. No state in Europe claimed it recorded any transit cutoff.
The threat of Naftogaz to disrupt supplies to Western Europe proved alarming enough to make Gazprom surrender despite that Kiev had met none of Russia’s demands. At 6:00 p.m., the contesting parties announced they reached an agreement. The statement was made after the telephone talks of Naftogaz CEO Oleg Dubina and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller. People in Gazprom say the monopoly resumed full supplies of gas to Ukraine yesterday night.
In essence, the recent gas clashes with Ukraine could be viewed as the first fiasco of Gazprom’s foreign policy. Until recently, the tough restrictive actions taken by the gas giant when negotiating with CIS had always drawn back gas buyers. The current government of Ukraine, however, appears to match Gazprom toughness, having enough levers to pressurize at the gas negotiations.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 06, 2008
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