Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom and Austria's Raiffeisen bank have set up a firm to ship Turkmen gas to Ukraine until 2028, Gazprom said on Thursday.
The 50-50 company, called RosUkrEnergo, was set up by a subsidiary of Gazprombank, which is fully owned by Gazprom, and a subsidiary of Raiffeisen bank, Gazprom said in a statement.
A committee which will include officials from Gazprom, Naftogas Ukrainy, Ukraine's state oil and gas company, Gazprombank and Raiffeisen bank, will manage it.
RosUkrEnergo will start shipping 44 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas to Ukraine from 2005 and will deliver up to 60 bcm annually between 2007 and 2028.
A Hungary-registered company, Eural Trans Gas, has been shipping Turkmen gas to Ukraine since 2003.
Eural Trans Gas, which also sells Turkmen gas on to European markets, said the formation of RosUkrEnergo would not affect its business.
"Eural Trans Gas has an ongoing contract to transit gas from Turkmenistan to and through the Ukraine and onto Europe," said a spokesman for the firm. "There is no monopoly on the transit of gas. As far as we know this will not affect our contracts."
Analysts and Gazprom minority shareholders have said Eural TG's activities harmed Gazprom's interests.
They said there was no direct link between Gazprom, whose pipelines are used for shipments, and Eural Trans Gas. They also said that Eural Trans Gas' capital was too small for the company's turnover of $2 billion.
Source: Reuters
30.07.2004