news

cailianshe news, august 31 (editor: shi zhengcheng)on friday evening beijing time, just as commodity traders were preparing for the weekend, a shocking piece of news came - ukraine is preparing to stop transiting russian crude oil and natural gas to europe starting next year.

when many eastern european countries were shocked by this, ukraine hurried to clarify:natural gas was supposed to be stopped, but stopping the flow of russian crude oil was a mistake.。

what's up?

podolak, an adviser to the ukrainian presidential office, said in an interview with the media earlier on friday:ukraine will stop supplying russian oil and gas to european countries through the friendship pipeline as early as january 1 next year.。

he pointed out thatcountries such as slovakia, the czech republic and hungary still obtain russian crude oil from the "friendship" pipeline.however, under the eu agreement, these countries need to diversify the sources of imported crude oil and stop obtaining transit crude oil and natural gas through ukraine.

podolak also said that if european countries need to import natural gas from kazakhstan or azerbaijan, ukraine is willing to continue transshipping, but the specific agreement needs to be negotiated separately.

the friendship pipeline was once an energy artery connecting russia and europe. the pipeline starts from russia and is divided into the northern and southern lines after entering belarus. the northern line connects poland and germany through belarus.the southern route passes through ukraine and supplies energy to hungary and other countries.after russia and ukraine entered a state of war in 2022, at the request of european countries, ukraine continued to transport russian crude oil and continued to collect transit fees from russia.

(european oil transportation network at its peak, source: s&p global)

after attracting public attention and shocking hungarian and slovak officials,podolyak quickly corrected his remarks: natural gas transshipment will be shut down according to the expiration of the contract, but the contract for oil transshipment is still many years away from ending.

according to the agreement signed between russia and ukraine in the previous years,the contract for gas transit through ukraine will expire at the end of this yearso podolak was right about stopping the transshipment of russian natural gas on january 1, 2025.

earlier this week, ukrainian president zelensky also confirmed that the russian natural gas transit contract would not be extended, but the possibility of transiting natural gas from other countries would be retained.

butthe oil transshipment contract between ukraine and russia is signed until the end of 2029.therefore, podolak retracted his previous statement and saidukraine will "continue to fulfill its contractual obligations regarding oil transit"。

chernyshev, ceo of ukraine's oil and gas company naftogaz, also said on friday thathe "strongly denied rumors of an early end to oil shipments to europe", ukraine remains a reliable partner of european countries.

chernyshev said that he understood the importance of stable energy supply to the people, soukraine will continue to fulfill its obligations under existing gas and oil transportation contractsat the same time, ukraine supports and will do everything possible to promote the rapid diversification of europe's energy supply sources.