Gazprom Threatens to Cut Ukraine Gas Supplies March 3

(Bloomberg) — OAO Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas exporter, threatened to cut supplies of the fuel to Ukraine March 3 if an accord on the repayment of debt isn’t signed by next week.

State-run Gazprom will reduce deliveries by 25 percent at 10 a.m. that day if Ukraine doesn’t sign an agreement reached Feb. 12 on debt and future deliveries, spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said in an e-mailed statement today.


`This can’t go on any longer,” Kupriyanov said in the statement. Ukraine has used 1.9 billion cubic meters of gas without paying for it, he said. “There has been no official response, the documents haven’t been signed yet.”

Ukraine, which gets 71 percent of its gas through Russia, averted Gazprom’s previous threat to cut supplies from Feb. 12 when President Viktor Yushchenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin reached the still unsigned agreement.

Bloomberg