Brussels - International lenders gathered in Brussels on Monday to discuss offering Ukraine a short-term loan so that it can buy gas to store now for Ukrainian and European Union clients to use in the winter. The meeting brought together the vice presidents of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom and Ukraine's gas monopoly Naftogaz with officials from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Officials from two groups representing European gas companies, Eurogas and Gas Infrastructure Europe, were also due to attend. The talks were hosted by the EU's executive, the European Commission.
The meeting was intended to "look at whether a short-term package of 'stop-gap' funding can be put together," commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said on June 19 when he announced the meeting.
A quarter of all the natural gas burned in the EU comes from Russia. Of that, 80 per cent passes through Ukrainian pipelines.
Each summer, Ukraine buys Russian gas and pumps it into massive underground reserves. The gas can then be sold in the winter to Ukrainian or EU consumers.
But weighed down by the current financial crisis, Ukrainian officials say that they do not have the 4.2 billion dollars they need to buy the roughly 20 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas they want.
If Ukraine cannot buy the gas, EU officials warn that this could have a serious impact on EU consumers in the winter, as a 20-bcm shortfall in Ukraine's gas supplies would reduce pressure throughout the Russia-EU gas transit system - thereby cutting the amount of gas which could flow to Europe.
The EU wants to see if international lenders can give Ukraine a one-off, short-term bridging loan so that it can buy the storage gas now, and pay its creditors once it has sold the fuel in the winter.
A row over allegedly unpaid bills in January provoked Gazprom to shut off all gas supplies through Ukraine. The resulting shortfall caused gas cut-offs across a swathe of EU member states.
