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EC proposes GDF Suez as intermediary for Ukraine-Russia gas payments

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom is not supporting plans to attract European companies as intermediaries for Russian gas supplies to Ukraine following trilateral gas talks in Brussels on Tuesday

MOSCOW, October 22. /TASS/. The European Commission has proposed France’s GDF Suez as an intermediary for supplies of Russian gas to Ukraine’s Naftogaz, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday.

A French multinational electric utility company, “GDF Suez is being considered as a European intermediary,” the Russian minister told reporters.

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom is not supporting plans to attract European companies as intermediaries for Russian gas supplies to Ukraine following trilateral gas talks in Brussels on Tuesday, he added.

In particular, the Russian natural gas producer does not back the idea that gas will be purchased by any European company on the border between Russia and Ukraine.

“All gas is supplied to Europe in line with the contracts envisaging that the transfer stations are outside Ukraine. Therefore, as for Ukraine’s demands, we have a current contract and we will be working under it,” he explained.

European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger earlier said the EU has proposed that a European company could become an intermediary in supplies of Russian gas to Ukraine. “If Naftogaz can’t pay, another company may buy Russian gas and then resell it,” Oettinger said.

The next EU-Ukraine-Russia ministerial meeting on the exports and transits of natural gas to and via Ukraine will be held in Brussels October 29.