Ukraine Pledges Stability of Supply Through Winter

Ukraine is ready for the winter heating season of 2010-2011 according to a senior official.

Serhiy Chekh, Ukraine's deputy fuel and energy minister, said his country has sufficient gas stored currently stored in the country's underground storage facilities. to meet Ukrainian and European needs.

"These are quite sufficient reserves in order to provide our country with gas and ensure its transit to Europe," he was quoted as saying.

Europe has been concerned about a repeat incident of the Ukraine-Russia dispute that resulted in a cut gas supplies to Ukraine that left parts of Europe in the cold for weeks.  The vast majority of Russian gas destined for Europe transit through Ukrainian pipelines.

Ukraine will always fulfill it gas transit obligations, President Viktor Yanukovich said earlier at a meeting with Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission. "We will always fulfill our international obligations on gas transit and we are confident that those sad events when Ukraine failed to fulfill them for different reasons will never repeat," he noted.

This week, European lawmakers passed new legislation requiring each member state to establish plans to deal with a gas disruption of 30 days by securing alternate gas supplies or by ensuring appropriate reserves in domestic storage.

Source: Itar Tass