EU verwelkomt Russische energiemaatschappij voor controle Oekraïne-EU gasleidingen (en)

BRUSSELS - The European Commission i has said it would welcome joint control of Ukraine's EU-transit gas pipelines by Russian energy giant Gazprom.

German energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger i told Ukrainian daily Kommersant-Ukraine in an interview out on Monday (4 March) that: "We can offer Ukraine a trilateral consortium which would include a Russian participant, [Ukrainian distributor] Naftogaz Ukrainy and European businesses."

He noted: "It's your government's right to decide who should own the gas transportation system and who will run it. If Kiev decides Gazprom should have that right, why not? Gazprom is involved in other pipeline projects, some of them in EU territory."

He added that the commission would like to play a bigger role in Kiev-Moscow talks on Russian gas prices for Ukraine, amid an ongoing dispute which threatens to disrupt EU-bound supplies.

"We are receiving certain information and giving certain advice, but no more than that. A decision on bringing another participant into the negotiations is possible, but that is [Ukraine's] prerogative," he noted.

The EU wants Gazprom to co-run Naftogaz, which supplies 20 percent of EU gas consumption, to put an end to the kind of disputes which saw households in EU countries cut off in the winter of 2009.

It also hopes the new consortium would increase transparency and attract investment in the ageing pipes.

The Russia-Ukraine gas business is in any case intertwined in an opaque way.

One of Ukraine's gas barons, Dmitry Firtash, by his own admission to a US diplomat in 2008, said that a Russian mobster, Semion Mogilevich, organised his early investments in the sector.

But Naftogaz' pipes and storage tanks are a jealously-guarded strategic asset, seen by some Ukrainian and EU diplomats as the basis of Ukrainian independence from Russia.

An EU diplomat told EUobserver i on Tuesday that Gazprom "is an arm of the FSB [Russia's largest intelligence service]."

He noted: "Russia's strategic aim is, step by step, to increase its influence in Ukraine in order to pull it away from EU integration to join the Customs Union [a Russia-dominated trade bloc]. If it becomes a co-owner of Naftogaz there is a risk that its influence in Kiev will grow."

He added that Oettinger's statement might have been a "mild provocation" to Ukraine to find out how it really wants to run its gas sector.

Meanwhile, the commissioner is also trying to shepherd construction of a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea directly to EU countries, bypassing Russia in a bid to reduce dependence.

Azerbaijan is to be the main supplier.

But Oettinger told Kommersant-Ukraine that Turkmenistan, whose gas would increase the project's capacity to a more meaningful level, is unlikely to get on board. "I am sure that Turkmen gas definitely will not come to Europe this decade," he said.

Meanwhile, Russia, in a symbolic event last December in Anapa on Russia's Black Sea coast, began construction of South Stream, a competing project to the EU's Caspian scheme.

Its CEO, Dutch executive Marcel Kramer, predicted that it will "transport the first gas by late 2015."

Oettinger declined an invitation to attend the meeting, however.

He noted in his interview on Monday that "We [EU institutions] … are not putting money or other support into the [South Stream] consortium."