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.