Miller said that gas supplies resumed (at 0700 GMT) after Gazprom received $234 million out of a total of $500 million expected in pre-payment for October gas deliveries.
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Naftogaz Ukrainy has sent a request to Russia’s Gazprom for the supply of 114 million cubic meters of natural gasper day which will significantly increase gas stocks in underground storage facilities in the coming days, Energy and Coal Industry Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Demchyshyn has said.
The deal foresaw Ukraine receiving Russian gas for six months through March 2016. The future of the Turkish Stream pipeline is now uncertain, but among the more recent pipeline proposals are Russia’s as-yet-unnamed proposed onshore extension of the Turkish Stream pipeline, which would take natural gas across Greece before heading north to Austria.
“Putin is betting on Nord Stream, but that bet is risky”, Sijbren de Jong, energy security analyst at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, said by e-mail.
According to BP, the expansion project will involve the construction of two new compressor stations in Georgia, which will triple the gas volumes exported through the pipeline to over 20 Bcm per year. “This is a huge risk”, he added.
But these reserves could not be enough if the winter is harsh, they warned.
Those interruptions have not only been problematic for Ukraine, where winter temperatures can drop to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), but also for Europe, which relies on Gazprom for about a third of its energy needs.
Moscow remains adamant that Ukraine should repay by December the $3 billion it issued to Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych ahead of pro-European protests that ousted him in February 2014.
Ukraine has not bought gas from Russian Federation since June 2014 due to an disagreement on the rates set by Gazprom for the fourth quarter after reducing the price to $230 per 1,000 cubic metres.
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Last week Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said a “real truce” had begun in eastern Ukraine but that a long-lasting peace with pro-Kremlin insurgents would still take a few time.
