BERLIN, Jan 4, 2006 -- Xinhua

 

German Economic Minister Michael Glos welcomed the Russia-Ukraine natural gas agreement on Wednesday, but warned his country needs to develop more domestic energy sources.

"We have to fundamentally think about how we can secure our energy supply over the long term with energy sources from Germany, " he said.

Germany relies heavily on energy imports from Russia, with 36 percent of its natural gas and over 25 percent of its crude oil coming from the country.

Officials with Russian energy giant Gazprom and its Ukraine counterpart Naftogaz said on Wednesday they had agreed on a five-year deal under which Kiev will buy gas at the Russian border at a price of 230 U.S. dollars per 1,000 cubic meters.

The new price amounts to a huge rise from the 50 dollars that Ukraine had been paying until now, a remnant of the subsidized Soviet-era pricing system.

The settlement capped a gas dispute between Kiev and Moscow that had lasted for months.

Russia cut down natural gas supply to Ukraine on Sunday after Kiev rejected Russia's demand to more than quadruple the price.

The sudden move caused panic in western European nations, whose gas imports are mostly pumped from Russia via pipelines running through Ukraine.

Glos and other conservatives in the government have called for a re-think of the decision to phase out all nuclear power stations, which currently supply about 30 percent of the country's electricity.

The former SPD-Green coalition government under Gerhard Schroeder ordered in 2000 the phasing out of all 18 German nuclear plants by 2020. The first was closed in May 2005.

In addition to nuclear power stations, near 50 percent of German electricity comes from coal and 10 percent comes from wind power.

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