Kyiv, 4 August 2014 – “Governmental draft law on reforming Ukraine’s gas transportation system is a positive sign for our Western partners showing government’s readiness to act in line with European energy legislation,” said Mykhailo Honchar, President of “Strategy XXI” Center for Global Studies at a briefing in the Ukraine Crisis Media Center. “Adoption of the law in question will definitely foster interest towards our gas transportation system first of all on the part of European companies and will enable to involve foreign partners into the process of its management. Nevertheless in my opinion it is worth rescheduling this law coming in force for the post-war period as the government now needs to focus on Ukraine’s energy security and protection of the critical part of infrastructure. It is extremely important to ensure that autumn-winter 2014-2015 period passes with minimal losses,” he added.
“De-facto we are facing external aggression that’s why any actions related to reforming the gas sector will definitely bring certain disorganization as a consequence. Taking gas transportation system and gas storage system out of Naftogaz structure and turning them into fully independent economic operators is in fact logical and quite reasonable. However it is not the right time to split the technologically united gas transportation system into companies connected with own separate main gas pipelines and separate underground gas storages. Today’s priority is to manage gas transportation system and gas sector on the whole. I would like to underline that it does not mean refusing the reform but changing its implementation pattern. The reform needs to bring in new quality to exploiting of the gas transportation system and of the underground gas storage system but not at the price of disorganizing their work especially at the moment critical for the country,” explained Mr. Honchar. According to Mykhailo Honchar an important step is to settle down disputes with the Russian Federation in trilateral negotiations format with compulsory participation of European Commission representatives.
