EU Commissioner: Ukraine Could Transit Gas from Slovakia

European Commissioner for Energy Guenther Oettinger has suggested that Ukraine could transit its gas from  Slovakia within a matter of months.

"I expect that next spring the corridor for reverse gas transit through Slovakia will be open," the European official said in an interview with Ukrainian national newspaper Kommersant-Ukraine published yesterday. Currently, this reverse-transit option exists from Poland and Hungary, he pointed out.

Mr. Oettinger also said that the European Union was ready to step into an ongoing dispute about gas prices between Russia and Ukraine should Ukraine want it to.

"We are receiving certain information and giving certain advice, but no more than that," he said. "A decision on bringing another participant into the negotiations is possible, but that is [Ukraine's] prerogative."

Russia and Ukraine have been involved in several disputes about gas pricing, the latest of which relates to the prices charged by Gazprom to Naftogaz Ukrainy. On Saturday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said that his country would not pay for gas not supplied to it by Gazprom in 2012.

"We told them we had considered this $7 billion [charge] unreasonable and would not pay them [that amount]," he said. The prime minister also said that gas pricing and contracts must be renegotiated with Russia by the end of this year, which would bring to a close a dispute that has been running since 2009.

The dispute relates to a gas price agreed by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Ms. Tymoshenko has since been jailed for seven years in relation to the deal on a charge of abuse of power.

Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia remain ongoing with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the issue. However, at the time of writing, no deal had been struck.