Berlin - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier phoned Moscow and Kiev on Thursday to appeal to both to end a dispute over gas payments that has led to a cut-off in Russian gas supplies to Ukraine. A spokeswoman in Berlin said Steinmeier called for them to try "intensively and constructively" to obtain an agreement, telling them that a compromise satisfying both sides must be possible.
He also told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Ogrysko that Berlin expected the two nations to fulfil their contractual obligations to pump and provide gas for western Europe.
Both ministers assured Steinmeier this would happen, the spokeswoman said.
Gas suppliers said Thursday they foresaw no shortage of gas in Germany, western Europe's biggest gas importer.
"Our customers can count on reliable deliveries," said Martin Weyand, chief of the BDEW German utilities federation.
He said German did not rely only on pipelines through Ukraine to receive Russian natural gas, but also on transit via Belarus. In addition, Norway, Britain and the Netherlands supply Germany with gas from offshore fields. He also said Germany held large gas stocks.
Bernhard Reutersberg, chief executive of E.ON Ruhrgas AG, a major distributor, said in Essen: "Even if the dispute goes on for a long time, households and other retail customers are not going to suffer shortages here."
Nor were any wholesale customers currently affected.
"Our compensating capacity would only be stretched if we were to find ourselves facing grave supply cuts, continuing for a long time and with an especially cold winter," said Reutersberg, whose company buys one quarter of its gas from Russia.
Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom said on Thursday it had shut down gas deliveries to Ukraine in a move that followed a collapse in bilateral talks on a new gas supply contract and payments of outstanding debt.
