REUTERS
Italy's Snam and Slovakia-based Eustream are reportedly ready to lease part of the Ukrainian gas transport system (GTS) after 2020 when a "transit" contract with Russia's Gazprom expires, according to the Ukrainian online newspaper ZN.UA.
The issue is likely to be discussed next week at an annual gas conference where the Cabinet of Ministers, which is a shareholder in national oil and gas holding Naftogaz of Ukraine, and Naftogaz's management are to attend, ZN.UA wrote.
"The Italian-Slovak offer deserves to be considered because the proposed format of cooperation between the gas transportation operators requires neither privatization, nor change in the ownership of Ukraine's gas transportation system and underground gas storage facilities," it said.
The consent of the Ukrainian party to such an option will allow further shipments of Russian gas via the Ukrainian GTS even after the ten-year transit contract concluded in January 2009 expires.
According to the sources of the publication, the jointly developed option of gas transit shipments via the gas transportation systems of Ukraine, Slovakia and Austria before the entry into the Italian GTS has been submitted to the Ukrainian president and the government for consideration.
Italy is a major importer of Russian gas supplied mainly through the Ukrainian and Slovak gas pipelines.
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As UNIAN reported earlier, the current contract for gas transit between Naftogaz and Gazprom was signed in 2009 for a period of ten years, until the end of 2019.
Top managers of the Russian monopoly have repeatedly stated their intention to reduce gas transit via Ukraine to the EU (to 15 billion cubic meters per year) from 2020, or halt it completely. To this end, Russia actively lobbies the construction of two bypass routes: a gas pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea (Nord Stream 2) and the Black Sea (Turkish Stream).