Working meeting held between Dmitry Medvedev and Alexey Miller

Gazprom has completed 11 sets of its planned preventive maintenance and repair operations, as well as has taken all necessary measures to get the system ready for the autumn/winter period. The company has 72.232 billion cu m of gas reserved in UGS facilities for the upcoming winter, with a daily deliverability of 843.3 million cu m of gas. It is an all-time high for the domestic gas sector.

As for production, Gazprom extracted 389 billion cu m of gas in 9,5 months of 2019. This marks an increase of 3.4 billion cu m, or 0.9 %, against the same period of last year.Gas supplies from the company's gas transmission system in the same period of this year added 0.8 billion cu m, or 0.5 %. In other words, domestic gas consumption in Russia is showing moderate growth.

Gazprom´s exports to external markets – to Europe – in 9,5 months amounted to 152.6 billion cu m of gas, which, although 2.5 % less than in the record year of 2018, is still a 2.6 % improvement over 2017. In addition, Gazprom is going to inject 11.4 billion cu m of its own gas into European UGS facilities this year.

The main issue on the agenda is the expiration of the contract for gas transit across Ukraine, which will be effective through Dec. 31, 2019. There is a need to fully resolve all court disputes before signing a new contract, Miller said, the ruling by the Stockholm court, which introduced an imbalance into 2 contracts: the one for supplies and the one for transit across Ukraine.

The 2nd issue is that Ukraine needs to give a definitive answer whether it intends to buy Russian gas and, if it does, whether it will be done in large or small amounts. Supplies will be much less expensive than reverse supplies from Western Europe, which are basically the same Russian gas. The price of gas for end consumers in Ukraine in case of direct supplies may go down by up to 20 % compared to the current price.