31.10.02

Ukraine, Poland, EU to discuss extending Odessa-Brody pipeline in Dec.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh, his Polish counterpart Leszek Miller and European Commission officials will probably hold talks in December on the possibility of extending the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline to the Polish port of Gdansk.

Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Oleh Dubyna told reporters that he discussed this proposal with Faouzi Bensarsa, the coordinator of the INOGATE (Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe) program and representative of the EC Energy Group Directorate-General, at a meeting in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Bensarsa will now go to Poland, where he will discuss further plans for the development of the Odessa-Brody pipeline with the Polish prime minister, Dubyna said.

He said strong consideration is now being given to bringing the Caspian region into the Odessa-Brody corridor, an effort supported by the European Union. Positive steps in this direction include Azerbaijan decision to ship oil via the pipeline, Dubyna said.

Ukraine completed the 674-km Odessa-Brody pipeline and the Yuzhny oil terminal in Odessa in 2001. The pipeline has a diameter of 1,020 mm. The first phase of the Ukrainian stretch of the Eurasian Oil Transportation Corridor (EAOTC) can carry 9 million to 14.5 million tonnes of oil annually. The EAOTC's capacity is to be increased gradually to 40 million tonnes in future.

Ukraine earlier reached a preliminary agreement with Poland to extend the pipeline from Brody to Plotsk, with an eventual outlet via an existing pipeline to Gdansk and the Baltic Sea.

(Interfax)

Naftogaz Ukraine to supply 0.6 bln cubic meters of gas to MOL in 2002

Ukrainian national gas company Naftogaz will supply 0.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas to MOL, the Hungarian oil and gas company, in the 2002 winter period.

Naftogaz Chairman Yuriy Boyko announced this in a report he read out in Kyiv at the international conference entitled "Oil and gas 2002: strategy to develop Ukraine's transit capacity."

Ukraine may soon become a transit country for supplies to European consumers of Turkmen gas, the export potential of which is estimated at 50 billion - 70 billion cubic meters a year. Naftogaz Ukraine already sells Turkmen gas to Romania and Hungary.

In order to increase the effectiveness of gas pipelines in Central Asia, Russia and Ukraine, a project has been developed to construct a pipeline in Russia from Aleksandrov Gai to Novopskov (from the Russian- Kazakh to the Russian-Ukrainian border) in the same corridor as the existing Soyuz pipeline. Construction and operation of the 28 billion cubic meter capacity pipeline could be implemented on a multilateral basis, Naftogaz reports.

Naftogaz also plans to form a joint venture with Russian gas giant Gazprom with the aim of jointly exporting gas to European countries.

(Interfax)