Ukrainian Company Helps Gas Levels With Sales

Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash's Ostchem Holding AG will sell natural gas to manufacturers to help NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy cut imports, newspapers in Ukraine reported.

Firtash announced the move at a press conference. He said his venture could supply up to 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to industrial consumers in Ukraine.

"I can deliver from 1.5 to 2 billion cubic meters of gas. This is what I can do for them [other industrial consumers]," he said, quoted in Kommersant-Ukraine and the Kyiv Post.

Firtash said that recently Naftogaz Ukrainy asked him to organize gas supplies to other industrial consumers in the first quarter, when Naftogaz uses large volumes of gas due to winter weather and industrial needs.

"There was a request to us to sell part of our volume on the market to help Naftogaz so that it would not buy an extra volume of gas but give gas to heating enterprises and the population," he said.

Ukraine has been making strenuous efforts to reduce its gas dependence on Russia, after a series of disputes and denial of service in 2009. Earlier this year, Russian gas provider Gazprom demanded $7 billion (€5.4 bn) from Ukraine for gas stipulated in a contract, but which had not been used.