KIEV, October 31 /TASS/. Ukraine's Naftogaz and the Ministry of Energy and Coal Mining Industry are expected to announce a tender for foreign investors who wish to run Ukraine’s gas transportation system, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a meeting of the anti-crisis energy center on Friday.

The prime minister said that investors from the United States and the European Union should be invited to run Ukraine’s gas transportation system and underground gas storage reservoirs under a law on reforming the Ukrainian gas transportation system signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on September 8.

The functions of operational and technological management will be transferred from a state-run enterprise to a gas transportation system operator to be appointed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy and Coal Mining Industry. The operators may include economic agents which can be founded and owned either by the Ukrainian state or by the state and legal entities owned and controlled by residents of the EU countries, the United States and the European Energy Community. The state is supposed to hold a 51% stake in such enterprises. Other shareholders should either be operators of the gas transportation system or members of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas /ENTSOG/.

The same rules apply to the operators of underground gas storage reservoirs: they can either be state-owned or controlled by the state jointly with other companies owned by residents from the United States, the European Union and the European Energy Community /EEC/.