The Gazprom headquarters hosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Company’s Management Committee and Yury Boiko, Fuel and Energy Minister of Ukraine.

The parties discussed the issues of Russian gas supplies to Ukraine. It was underlined that in the first quarter of 2010 NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy was offtaking less gas than it had been provided for in the contract. In this respect, it is very important to ensure that the required natural gas volumes are injected into Ukraine’s UGS facilities by the 2010–2011 autumn/wither period startup.

“We should proceed from the fact that NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy has to replenish its UGS facilities with the required gas volumes by the beginning of the 2010–2011 autumn/wither period in order to smoothly overcome this peak load period,” said Alexey Miller. He emphasized that this challenge had to be met both for securing gas supplies to Ukraine’s consumers and for performing reliable Russian gas transit to Europe.

Yury Boiko noted that the new leadership of the Ukrainian fuel and energy complex pursued the objective of improving the relationship with Gazprom and establishing an equitable and mutually beneficial partnership in the gas industry.

Background:

On January 19, 2009 Gazprom and NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy singed two separate contracts:

- the purchase and sale contract for the period from 2009 through to 2019;

- the contract on volumes, terms and conditions of natural gas transit across Ukraine for the period from 2009 through to 2019.

On November 24, 2009 Gazprom and NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy signed addenda to the natural gas purchase and sale contract, according to which the annual gas quantity contracted for 2010 made up 33.75 billion cubic meters.