Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Kiev on September 14-15 to discuss possible gas supplies from Kazakhstan to Ukraine with his counterpart Viktor Yanukovych, the Kazakh ambassador to Ukraine said on Monday.
The two leaders may sign an accord on the issue, but this will depend on existing Russian-Ukrainian agreements, Amangeldy Zhumabayev told reporters in Kiev.
"New relations between Russia and Ukraine are being shaped, and this gives us hope that we can implement new projects. We are very interested in supplying oil and gas to Ukraine," he said.
During a meeting in Kiev in March, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev that his country was interested in buying natural gas from Kazakhstan. In April, Yanukovych said Ukraine was ready to take part in developing gas deposits in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan's Caspian shelf has an estimated 3.3 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, and the country's gas production is expected to grow to approximately 45 billion cubic meters in 2010.
Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed during their meeting in April in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov that Russia would grant Ukraine a 30 percent discount on the gas price of $330 per 1,000 cu m over the next 10 years.
Gazprom and Ukrainian state oil and gas company Naftogaz are currently discussing a possible joint venture. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said the joint venture would enable Ukrainians to buy Russian gas at the price of about $60 per 1,000 cu m.
Current prices for Ukrainian consumers now vary from 725.4 hryvnas ($91.9) per 1,000 cu m to 2,954.1 hryvnas ($374.5) per 1,000 cu m.
KIEV, August 30 (RIA Novosti)
