Ukraine Considers Transiting Gas from Azerbaijan to EU, Zelensky Says

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kyiv is in talks to transit gas from Azerbaijan to the EU after the Russian gas transit contract expires in December 2024, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg on July 3.

kyiv and the EU have said they will not seek the extension of the transit agreement for Russian gas at the end of the year. The agreement was signed in 2019.

Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Bloomberg in March that he did not “see the possibility” of Russian gas continuing to flow through Ukraine after December.

“Further steps are now being considered to find out how we can use the pipeline with another gas supplier, another country. Negotiations are underway,” Zelensky told Bloomberg.

“We do not want to extend the gas contract with the Russian Federation. We do not want them to make money here,” he added.

Gas transit from Azerbaijan is “one of the proposals,” Zelensky said.

According to Bloomberg, Ukraine earned about $1 billion from transit revenues in 2021, so continuing to use the vast pipeline system “would help provide crucial funding to the war-torn economy.”

Despite efforts by European countries to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, Russian supplies remain a significant share of EU imports.

Russia has cut back a large part of its gas transit by pipeline in Europe in 2022, but countries like Austria, Hungaryand Slovakia remain heavily dependent on Russian imports.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed an agreement with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku in July 2022 to increase Azerbaijani natural gas imports to “at least” 20 billion cubic meters per year by 2027.