Gazprom launches gas supplies to Ukraine – CEO

“Ukraine has requested the maximum volume of delivery, at 114 million cubic meters per day, which corresponds to the country’s annual gas imports of 52 billion cubic meters,” Gazprom’s CEO said. “We’ve received prepayment worth $234 mln out of the promised $500 mln for October from Ukraine’s Naftogaz”, Miller said.

Ukraine has since been trying to cut its dependence on Russian Federation gas, buying shipments from European nations which had bought it from Russian Federation at a lower price.

The resumption of gas supplies comes as fighting in the east has largely died down, fuelling hopes that the conflict that has claimed more than 8,000 lives can be resolved.

Ukraine halted all natural gas purchases from Gazprom last July after the parties failed to agree on the terms of gas deliveries for the third quarter of 2015.

“This is a resumption of cooperation”, Yury Korolchuk, an analyst with the Institute of Energy Strategies in Kiev, told AFP. The European Union has allocated $500 million to Naftogaz to ensure gas supplies of 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) as storage for the winter season.

Gazprom has warned that the supplies of 2 bcm will be not enough and Ukraine will run out of gas before winter ends.

Moscow and Kyiv have been locked in an acrimonious dispute over the price of natural gas ever since Russian Federation annexed the Crimean peninsula and began its overt material and logistical support of anti-government rebels in eastern Ukraine.