Official talks will take place tomorrow, 15 April, between Slovakia and its troubled neighbour Ukraine on gas supplies via Slovakia using reverse flow mode, to help the country deal with its demand after Russia hiked up gas prices for Ukraine by 81% since annexing the Crimea region.
The meeting will take place at the Slovakia’s biggest compressor station in Velke Kapusany from the morning and will be led on the Slovak side by economy minister Tomas Malatinsky. He will be joined by Ukrainian energy minister Jurij Prodan and representatives of the European Commission and Slovak transmission system operator eustream a.s.
The parties will be discussing the technical obstacles to the reverse flow supply of gas to Ukraine, but also the contractual ones as the transmission line via Slovakia provides the EU with around one third of its gas from Russian gas giant Gazprom. The preparations for reverse flow are already underway.