BRUSSELS (AP) — Russia and Ukraine on Monday made
substantial progress toward reaching an agreement on a lower price for
gas deliveries and the payment of outstanding debt by Kiev, in a bid to
avert a disruption of gas supplies that could also affect western
Europe, a top EU official said.
The chief executives of the two
sides’ state gas companies agreed on a proposal that would see a lower
gas price for Ukraine complete with a debt repayment schedule, said the
European Union’s Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, who hosted the
negotiations in Brussels.
Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz
will now take the proposal to their experts and shareholders for
approval, notably the respective governments, which is the prerequisite
for another round of talks to seal the deal in the coming days, he said.
Oettinger
declined to divulge the envisioned new gas price for Ukraine, but said
it would be lower than the $485 Ukraine currently pays but above the
discounted rate of $268 per 1,000 cubic meters it was once granted by
Russia. The price should then be held steady for one year to guarantee
supply safety, he added.
In the EU-facilitated talks that also
featured both countries’ energy ministers, the parties agreed Russia
will neither request prepayment for further deliveries nor restrict
supplies while negotiations continue, the EU said.
The progress in
the talks came after Ukraine’s Naftogaz paid Gazprom $786 million for
the February and March supplies following the first round of EU-mediated
talks in Berlin last week.
Officials were keen on avoiding an
interruption of gas deliveries to Kiev because it could also disrupt
supplies for western Europe since Ukraine is an important gas transit
country.
Moscow has put Kiev’s gas debts dating back to November
at $3.5 billion, and Miller said last week that gas delivered in May
could take it up to $5.2 billion. Oettinger said only the bills for two
months from last year and April and May of this year are now
outstanding, but he did not cite an overall debt figure.
Ukraine,
which saw price discounts granted by Russia canceled following the
ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, has been seeking a
new price agreement before settling debts.
Gazprom scrapped a
discount granted to Yanukovych in December and then another rebate
linked to a 2010 deal on Russian navy presence in Ukraine’s Crimea
region, which Moscow annexed in March. Canceling the discounts raised
the price by 80 percent.
Yanukovych fled to Russia in February
after months of protests, triggered by his decision to dump a pact with
the EU in favor of closer ties with Moscow.
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Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed reporting.