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Gazprom raises gas supplies to Europe

OAO Gazprom boosted natural-gas supplies to Europe via three routes as Russia and Ukraine courted global support in a price dispute.

Russia's state-owned gas exporter boosted shipments along two routes through Belarus and one to Turkey, Boris Posyagin, head of Gazprom's dispatch department, said on Saturday in comments broadcast on state television.

Officials from the two countries on Saturday each visited the Czech Republic, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency, with neither side showing signs of resolving the impasse in a spat that led Gazprom to cut gas supplies to Ukraine on New Year's Day.

''Both sides will need to find a compromise,'' Alexander Rahr, director of Russian programs at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said by phone with Bloomberg News. ''The risk if they don't is they both will lose and suffer financially.''

Russia supplies a quarter of Europe's gas, 80 percent of which is transported through Ukraine. Thursday's cutoff echoed a similar dispute in 2006 that disrupted supplies to Europe, prompting the EU to call for supply and transit commitments to be honored ''under all circumstances.''

Gazprom raised supplies via the Yamal-Europe pipeline and Beltransgaz system, both of which cross Belarus, and the Blue Stream link to Turkey after halting shipments to Ukraine as the two sides failed to agree on 2009 prices for supplies and transit. Bohdan Sokolovskyi, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's energy adviser, said on Saturday that the shutoff may encounter difficulties in pumping gas to Europe in the next 10 to 15 days.


 

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