Ukraine rejects cheap Russian gas offer, imports more expensive EU gas instead

Sputnik
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:42 UTC

© Reuters

Ukraine increased deliveries of natural gas from Slovakia by 18 percent on Friday after failing to strike a deal with Russia's Gazprom for what would have reportedly been a significantly cheaper deal.

Ukraine stopped buying natural gas from Russia in July, after failing to agree a deal with Gazprom to extend the natural gas supply contract for the third quarter of 2015.

1. Ukraine refused to buy Russian gas at the price of $247.18 per thousand cubic meters.

2. According to Ukrainian media, the country pays around $360 per thousand cubic meters for natural gas purchased from EU countries

"Compared to yesterday, the request for and actual delivery of natural gas from Slovakian territory grew by 18 percent, from 13.6 million to 16.5 million cubic meters per day," he said. Belyayevsky added that natural gas for Ukrainian consumers is as of today being supplied solely through Slovakia.

Ukraine began buying natural gas from EU countries in 2014, after pricing conflicts with Russian gas supplier Gazprom. The gas Ukraine gets through the "reverse" pipelines of its western neighbors is generally the same natural gas it would otherwise buy from Russia, although at a greatly reduced capacity.

Comment: Makes perfect sense. Ukraine's economy is in such a great shape ruin and the country is obviously prosperous broke enough that they can allow themselves to spend:

• A thousand cubic meters of natural gas costs $360 - from the EU - and Ukraine is buying 16.5 million cubic meters of it a day, that makes: $5,940,000 per day
• If Ukraine bought the same amount of the cheaper Russian gas at $247.18 instead, it would have cost:$4,078,470 per day

Ukraine is spending $1,861,530 more per day, because their lenders - the IMF and the EU - love hate Russia. Those bailout dollars must be spent on something, right?