Putin to discuss gas crisis with Merkel

MOSCOW. January 16. KAZINFORM Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will pay a two-day working visit to Germany on Friday to discuss with Chancellor Angela Merkel the current gas crisis and the idea to launch a European consortium that would facilitate the resumption of the gas transit to Europe.

?Talks will focus on vital issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as on the situation with the transit of Russian gas to European consumers through the territory of Ukraine and joint effort to overcome the global financial and economic crisis,? he said. On Thursday Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed in a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yuschenko an innovative solution to enable Gazprom to resume transiting supplies of gas to European customers via Ukraine. Putin elaborated a joint European effort was necessary to promote gas transit resumption to Europe. ?We propose to our European partners to share transit risks, to organize a consortium that would buy the gas volume from Gazprom and pump it immediately to Ukraine and launch the transit. Our Ukrainian partners have no other grounds to impede the resumption of the transit,? Putin said. He said that from Gazprom's side the flow of gas was open, but despite all of its efforts, and all of the requests from European partners Ukraine had continued to refuse Gazprom's daily requests to transit gas to Europe. Ukraine said it was technically incapable of allowing Russian gas to reach Europe unless it received 1.7 bcm of gas for technical purposes, partly to refill the pipeline system and partly to fuel the compressor stations along its network. Whilst Putin called the request for Gazprom to transfer ownership of this significant and expensive amount of gas to Ukraine absurd, he said that Russia had to help Ukraine. Whilst Russia was not able to take all the financial risks of providing this large volume of gas alone, it was proposing to major European partners and customers to jointly form a consortium, which would share the cost and ownership of the technical gas that would be pumped to Ukraine to enable the resumption of supplies to Europe. Ukraine would promise to pay for this gas once a price had been agreed upon. Until then, the gas would remain the property of the international consortium in the hope that this would guarantee that it would not be illegally siphoned off from the Ukrainian transit system again. It is hoped that this solution would prevent any further disruption of supplies of Russian gas to Europe, Kazinform refers to Itar-Tass. ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni called the proposal innovative and constructive, and underlined that this was a commercial rather than a political solution. All other European companies who purchase Russian gas delivered via Ukraine, such as E.on Ruhrgas, will be invited to join the consortium in the coming hours. The consortium could be put together very rapidly, Gazprom said. This initiative is the latest in a series of Russian attempts to do whatever it can to make sure that European customers are receiving its gas. In Germany Putin will stay in Berlin and Dresden and will visit the Russian pavilion at the international Green Week agricultural fair.