Report: Gazprom’s Ukraine transit to fall to 15 bcm with new pipelines

MOSCOW/ANKARA, Apr 4 (PRIME) -- Transit of Russian gas across Ukraine will not stop altogether but decrease to 10–15 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year from 93.5 bcm in 2017, after the launch of the TurkStream and Nord Stream-2 pipelines, CEO Alexei Miller told Channel 1 in an interview broadcast late Tuesday.

“We are not saying that we are going to stop transit across the territory of Ukraine fully because there are neighboring states, there are regions, which border Ukraine on the European side and there is no doubt that supplies to these regions of Europe will be made with transit across the territory of Ukraine. The amount will be less significant, doubtlessly. It seems that it can be 10–15 bcm a year,” Miller said.

Gazprom is litigating over its transit contract with Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow has been long negotiating fulfillment of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project with Europe and that he hopes that the negotiations will be fruitful. Putin said that Moscow and Ankara have no factors which could stop construction of TurkStream.

“You have asked me about negative and provocative factors. We have no such factors with Turkey. The opposite is true: the bilateral relations develop constructively,” Putin said.

He said that TurkStream can satisfy the needs of Southeast Europe if the countries there express a desire to join.

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