Groysman: Tymoshenko`s gas contract ”betrayal of national interests”

Thursday, June 23, 2016 - 14:40 (EEST) Section: Latest news

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said that the gas contract with Russia signed by the government of Yulia Tymoshenko in 2009, fixing the price at $450 per 1,000 cubic meters, resulted in tens of billions of dollars in Russian claims, adding that it was in fact a betrayal of national interests.
”There is a clear view in the expert community that the contract for $450 per 1,000 cubic meters was signed on conditions unfavorable for Ukraine. My attitude to this is very negative. I believe that this is a betrayal of national interests,” he told journalists during the Energy Efficiency Forum in Kyiv.
According to Groysman, the signing of the contract resulted in the loss of Ukraine`s large financial resources.
”I believe that this contract is tens of billions of dollars of claims which Ukraine sees from Russia today, this is the payment of too many funds for this gas. This is a problem that we yet have to live through somehow,” he said.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce will hear claims filed by Ukrainian state holding company Naftogaz of Ukraine and Russian gas giant Gazprom in late November – early December 2016, and the judgment is expected to be awarded in late January 2017.
In October 2014, Naftogaz appealed to the Stockholm arbitration court seeking the revision of its natural gas transit contract with Gazprom, as well as compensation from Gazprom for the shortfall in gas transit volumes.
The lawsuit lodged by Naftogaz with the Arbitration Institute against Gazprom in June 2014 demands not only the revision of Russian gas prices, which rose sharply in the second quarter of 2014 by more than a third, to $485 per 1,000 cubic meters, but also included the demand that Gazprom refund Ukraine $6 billion that the Ukrainian company said it had overpaid for gas since 2010.
Ukraine seeks the general revision of the terms of the gas contract with Gazprom dated 2009.