Ukrainian oil and gas company Naftogaz and Russian energy giant Gazprom may resume talks on the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine after the end of 2019 in June, Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev said on Thursday
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th May, 2019) Ukrainian oil and gas company Naftogaz and Russian energy giant Gazprom may resume talks on the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine after the end of 2019 in June, Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev said on Thursday.
"The Russian side has officially informed us that it will be able to talk only after the new president [Volodymyr Zelenskiy] is sworn in [in late May] ... I think, the negotiations will resume around June," Kobolyev said at an investment conference as quoted by the UNIAN news agency.
The current contract on the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine expires in the end of 2019. In January, the European Commission, Russia and Ukraine held a meeting on the future of the deal, but no concrete agreements had been reached.
In late April, Naftogaz Chief Commercial Officer Yuriy Vitrenko said that the company was going to offer Gazprom to set gas transit volumes at 60 billion cubic meters annually for the period of ten years.
In 2017, Kobolyev, said that the transit of Russian natural gas generated around $3 billion for Naftogaz yearly. In late January, the CEO announced that Naftogaz earned $500 million more thanks to transit of gas than it had spent on the import of this fuel.
