The European Commission is looking into reverse flow gas solutions to help supply Ukraine.
“For the moment the Commission works with the parties concerned in order to ensure that the Memorandum of Understanding can be signed as soon as possible,” the spokeswoman for European Energy Commissioner GüntherOettinger, Sabine Berger, told New Europe.
“A breakthrough in these long-standing negotiations would allow Ukraine to receive up to eight billion cubic metres of gas from Slovakia each year, in addition to what the country can already receive from Hungary and Poland,” the EU energy spokeswoman added.
On 15 April, German utility company RWE AG said it has started supplying gas to Ukraine. The reverse-flow deliveries from Germany via Poland are small for the moment, but could be ramped up to provide about a fifth of the country’s gas needs.
RWE Supply & Trading is the first Western European company to begin gas deliveries to Ukraine this year, RWE said, adding that “further significant volumes could be delivered to Ukraine if various transport restrictions at the Slovakian-Ukrainian border are politically and technically resolved within the next weeks or months.” Under an agreement signed with Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz in 2012, RWE could supply up to 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year, it said.
Meanwhile, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has also warned recently that European companies involved in supply gas to Ukraine through a reverse flow solution “should examine very closely the legality of this type of operation”.
About a third of the gas RWE will supply to Ukraine originally comes from Russia, according to the German company. The rest comes from Norway, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany.
On 14 April, the Foreign Affairs Council on Ukraine confirmed “the EU’s readiness to explore ways to assist Ukraine in securing its energy supply through further diversification, including through the rapid enhancement of reverse flow capacities, enhanced energy efficiency, and effective interconnections with and within the European Union. Such assistance must be combined with Ukraine’s efforts to reform and modernise its energy sector, in line with Ukraine’s commitments in the Energy Community Treaty”.
The Council said it takes note of Putin’s letter of 10 April to several EU Member States. The Council asked the European Commission to reply, on the basis of consultations with Member States, to Putin on behalf of EU and its Member States, in order to agree on consultations with Russia and Ukraine with a view to ensuring security of supply and transit.
The Council also expressed deep concern regarding the unilateral increase of gas prices applied to Ukraine and expressed “a firm conviction that all differences of views on the price and conditions of gas supplies should be solved through negotiations and available legal mechanisms, with a view to stabilising the economic situation in Ukraine”.
As forUkraine, gas could come as reverse flows fromSlovakia, Hungary andPoland. Slovakia is the EU’s best-placed country to pump gas to Ukraine should Russia cut supplies, but reversing flows along any of the four pipelines that take Russian gas to Slovakia via Ukraine would breach the terms of its contracts with Gazprom.
Moreover, it’s clear that Ukraine is not able to pay its bills. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Roberto Fico has said that only a third party, like the European Union and European Commission, can guarantee that Slovakia will get paid if the country helps Ukraine.
Asked if the EU can guarantee that Slovakia will get paid if we help Ukraine, Berger told New Europe that the Commission has no specific comment to make.