Russia won't renew electricity supply agreement with Ukraine

Moscow, Jan 12, 2016 -- RosBusinessConsulting

Russia's Energy Ministry will not to renew an agreement on electric power supplies to Ukraine over the situation around Crimea, Kommersant newspaper reports citing a source at the ministry. The extension of the agreement was supposed to go hand in hand with an agreement on electricity supplies to Crimea. No new deal on power supplies to the peninsula was concluded because Kiev insisted that Crimea should be referred to as the Ukrainian territory in the text of the agreement. Moscow turned out this demand after 94% of Crimean residents said in a telephone poll that they would put up with the interruption of power supplies until the second power line from Russia was built. However, an agreement on a parallel operation of both countries' electric power systems will be valid. This agreement stipulates the payment for power flows during power outages. The amounts of such flows are usually small, the newspaper notes. Last year, Ukraine minimized purchases of Russian electric power thanks to coal reserves accumulated by its thermal power plants. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said last weekend that there would be no power cuts in the country. According to Energy Strategy Foundation Co-Chairman Dmitry Marunich, the situation with power supplies in Ukraine was stable. However, the expert did not rule out rolling blackouts if temperatures fall to or below 15 degrees Celsius below zero and stay at that level for two weeks, or coal supplies are interrupted as a result of the escalation of tensions in the Donetsk region, or one of nuclear power plants' units is shut down due to an accident.

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