Russian foreign minister: Market positively reacted to Russia achieving its goals in gas conflict

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“For the first ten days of the year, Gazprom’s capitalization has increased by 22%. The fact cannot be ignored – the market has reacted to Russia achieving its goals in switching to market relations with Ukraine,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is quoted as saying by a REGNUM correspondent at a news conference on January 17. He stressed the importance of differentiating contracts for transit of the Russian gas to Europe and for gas supplies to Ukraine. Thus, thinks the minister, transit of the Russian gas is freed from being bound to the conditions of gas supplies to Ukraine. Besides, Lavrov drew attention to the fact that the contract on gas supplies to Europe was signed for five years. Before, the contracts were annual and each year the talks on the contracts “were delayed up to the last moment.”

As the minister noted, Russia continues to undertake measures to diversify routes of gas supplies by using the Byelorussian Blue Stream transit route and the future North-European pipeline. “All this raises our confidence that there will be no interruptions in gas supplies for the European consumers,” he noted.