BRUSSELS, May 14 (RIA Novosti) – Europe’s level of natural gas production is rapidly decreasing, Russian lawmaker Pavel Zavalny said Wednesday.
"Around half of European demand for gas is currently provided by domestic extraction,” said Zavalny, the Deputy Chairman of the Energy Committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament.
“However, there are basically no capabilities of increasing it. Norway and Britain are already showing a decrease in extraction. In Europe the amount of gas production will continue to decline and by 2020 the region will lose 40 percent of its extraction,” Zavalny said during the ninth international conference on Russian-EU energy dialogue.
Europe cannot rely on gas supplies from African countries and the Middle East region, the Russian energy official underlined.
“As for other resources, political instability in Africa and the Middle East do not allow us to consider these countries reliable suppliers. This applies equally to pipeline gas from Algeria and Libya and LNG supplies from Egypt, Qatar, Nigeria," Zavalny said.
On Wednesday, leading experts from 180 countries gathered in Brussels at a conference to discuss the situation with Ukraine’s gas transit as well as the EU’s Third Energy Package, a legislative initiative to develop an energy market on the continent.
Earlier this month, Russian and EU officials met in Warsaw to discuss gas supplies in connection with the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. The next round of multilateral talks is scheduled for Friday.
On Tuesday, Russian gas giant Gazprom sent an official notification to Ukraine’s state-run Naftogaz about switching to advanced payments for gas supplies, following Ukraine’s failure to pay its gas debts. If Kiev fails to pay for June deliveries by June 2, Gazprom will cut off gas supplies beginning June 3.
Ukraine has not paid for Russian gas in two months. According to Gazprom, Ukraine’s accumulated debt for previous deliveries totals $3.5 billion. On April 1, the price of Russian gas for Ukraine rose to $485 per thousand cubic meters from $268.50, as Russia withdrew two major discounts. Ukraine refuses to recognize the new gas price, which is fully in line with the contract that the two states signed in 2009.
