OREANDA-NEWS. June 23, 2014. The  Minister of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine Yurii Prodan emphasizes the need to strengthen protection of the objects of Ukrainian gas transportation infrastructure in order to prevent possible sabotage cases.

The  Minister wrote in a letter addressed to the European Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger.

“We are strengthening protection of the objects of our gas transportation infrastructure in order to prevent possible sabotage cases. Unfortunately, in the present situation we regard the risk as being very high,” the Minister explained.

Yurii Prodan informed that despite the request of the European Commissioner to the Russian side to avoid escalation of the conflict, Gazprom company had terminated deliveries of the natural gas to Ukraine on Monday, June 16, at 9:00 a.m. Kyiv time.

“It certainly creates problems in providing natural gas supplies for the Ukrainian consumers and ensuring sustainable gas transit to the EU countries. But, as we promised, we will endeavour to ensure reliability and continuity of the transit. We will do it as long as we have certain technological capacity,” Yurii Prodan assured.

Besides, Yurii Prodan appealed to the European Commissioner with a proposal to gather a relevant operative group consisting of EU representatives, who will have a chance to convince directly at the gas-measuring stations and dispatcher points that Ukrainian side fulfils its obligations in transportation of natural gas to the EU states.

In the end of the letter the Minister Yurii Prodan expressed gratitude to the European Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger and representatives of the European Commission for the efforts to facilitate settlement of the existing problem with natural gas deliveries.

“We haven’t achieved accord with the third negotiating party. The only reason is the absence of readiness of the Russian side to apply the constructive approach. But we are ready to further join efforts for the sake of overcoming the crisis,” Minister Yurii Prodan summed up.