MOSCOW, March 5. /TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has specified the conditions under which Russia will continue gas transit to Europe via Ukraine after 2019 - stable political situation and commerically favorable terms.
"We are ready to continue gas transit via Ukraine's gas transport system after 2019," Medvedev said in an interview with Luxemburger Wort newspaper ahead of his visit to Luxembourg. "Of course, there are several conditions for that. Briefly speaking, they include resolution of issues between interested companies, beneficial economic and commercial parameters of the deal, as well as a stable political situation," he added.
The prime minister said that Moscow will not stop using existing gas pipelines, both in Ukraine and other countries, after the construction of the Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream projects is complete.
"As a long-term and large-scale supplier of fuel, Russia aims to diversify its channels of delivering gas to the European market," he noted. "The more transit routes, the more reliable the deliveries," he added.
"We proceed from the fact tha Europe remains an important consumer of Russian gas despite dynamic development of green energy and the LNG segment," Medvedev said. "In any case, this will remain the case as long as decisions are made on the basis of economic feasibility or until we see a revolutionary breakthrough in energy technologies," he added.
The prime minister reminded that Russian gas supplies to the European market have been consistently growing in the last several years. "Prospects are rather good for a number of objective reasons, including the decrease in production at oil deposits in the North Sea, partial refusal to use coal and nuclear power in some countries. Another reason, of couse, is in the importance of having a back-up plan for renewable energy sources," Medvedev said. "That is why I think that in the foreseeable future, Russian gas will cover the largest share of European countries' energy demands," he concluded.