Ukraine is ready to pay for supplied Russian natural gas at the price of $268 per 1,000 cubic metres, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at a meeting of the Ukrainian government on Thursday.
“We are ready to pay the price of $268 for the already supplied gas,” he said, adding that Kiev had funds for that in the amount of $3.1 billion.
“We will pay $1.450 billion right after the signing of the trilateral protocol between Ukraine, Russia and the EU, and $1.650 billion more by the end of the year,” the prime minister concluded.
Earlier on Tuesday Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak told a government session that Russia and Ukraine have coordinated framework conditions for the renewal of gas deliveries to Ukraine in winter.
Ukraine is surviving through intensifying colds of the approaching winter exclusively due to reverse-flow supplies of natural gas from Europe, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk added.
“We have increased the gas reverse-flow from Slovakia to the maximum capacity and only thanks to the reverse the country survives and heats up itself,” Yatsenyuk said.
Poland has been the first country, through which Ukraine has started to pump natural gas from the European Union but Poland’s technical capacity allows supplying no more than 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually while about 6 billion cubic meters can be pumped from Hungary and 10 billion cubic meters from Slovakia.
Ukraine annually consumes about 40-45 billion cu m of natural gas, with more than half of this amount earlier purchased from the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom.
Russia and Ukraine continue gas talks with the EU’s mediation to resolve the gas dispute between the two ex-Soviet republics and ensure uninterrupted gas supplies to Europe in winter.
Yatsenyuk said earlier in the month he was confident that “if talks with Russia fail, gas can be replaced with additional reverse-flow supplies and heating oil.”
“We can increase reverse supplies. We’re working with European partners about the technical possibility of gas supplies from the EU,” the Ukrainian premier said.