Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said that today’s meeting of the Government is to consider the gas balance for 2015: "We have actually reduced natural gas consumption by 10 billion cubic meters for two years. In other words, the total amount of consumption of gas will be projected at 40 billion cubic meters," Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk emphasized at a meeting on Wednesday, 15 April.

According to the PM, from the one hand, a decrease in gas consumption is caused by Russian military aggression that affected industrial companies which consumed gas, "From the other hand, by a reduction in gas consumption by the population of the country."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption is a "challenge for the country as a whole."

According to him, "The Government together with the Ukrainian people saved $3.4 billion in 2014" on purchases from the aggressor country and Russian Gazprom: "Because we have taken a strict legal and economic position, Russia’s Gazprom received less income that should have been charged by the Ukrainian taxpayers with the purpose of buying new tanks and missiles."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk underlined that the gas supply scheme, built up in the country in 2014, "can be called as energy independent."

"War against Ukraine cost Gazprom about $6 billion in loss. If earlier we only had Gazprom and the intermediaries such as Liovochkin-Firtash that supplied gas and earned billions of dollars, then now the main suppliers are companies like Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell, RWE, EON, Gaz de France," the Prime Minister emphasized.

"We refused to middlemen. It was difficult, but we won this struggle for transparency in the gas market, including through the adoption of the Law on the natural gas market", the Prime Minister highlighted.

Today Ukraine, he stressed, acts in the competitive diversified gas market under direct contracts with gas purchases from European partners.

He recalled that Ukraine was fighting for a fair price in the natural gas market including through filing a lawsuit against the Russian Gazprom to the Stockholm arbitration court, as well as the claim for an increase in rates of gas transit for Gazprom.

"It all started with $500 per thousand cubic meters of gas, then it was $350, today's price is at $250 per thousand cubic meters of gas, which we can buy from our northern neighbor as well," Arseniy Yatsenyuk underlined.